My CEO Life

A month or so ago, in one of my other blogs My Travelling Life, i talked about how i thought the service of Qantas was slipping.  In particular i talked about a flight i recently had from San Francisco to Sydney in which a fellow passenger spilled water all over me and the Qantas guys really didn’t seem to care too much.  (Read entry)

However, imagine my surprise on the next international Qantas flight i had from Sydney to Los Angeles via Auckland that i ended up on one of the oldest 747-300 (yes 300 not 400) between Auckland and LA. Now you know its old when the seats in business class barely recline and the concept of inflight entertainment is 10 channels.

This is not exactly the sort of service you expect on a trans-Pacific flight and i put it down to Qantas running an old plane between Auckland and LA as a normal part of service. I tried to sleep but in the end it was pretty hard.

So therefore imagine my surprise when out of the blue i received a letter from Qantas saying that due to technical difficulties they had run an old plane on the route, that they were sorry for the inconvenience and more impressively, they actually gave me a voucher for $400 that i could use on any Qantas flight.

Now given all the bad press that Qantas has been receiving about safety, maintenance and downsizing, i had not expected them to do anything and in fact i had thought that the poor service was just part of the route i was taking. This approach has reaffirmed my belief in Qantas as a quality carrier and this simple act will ensure a lot more business from me.

This is a great example of when things go wrong, a company should not hide, make excuses or hope that the customers forget.  Instead they should get on the front foot, apologise and if appropriate, deliver some “make good” to the customer.  The result is that my views on Qantas, which had been slipping, have improved and i will continue to actively choose to use them.

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