My CEO Life

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Anyone who has travelled domestically in the United States knows just how bad the US airlines are.  It doesnt seem to matter which one you fly one (Delta, United, America, and so on) the service is often delivered with a snarl, business class and first class seats make going to the theatre seem comfortable, the flights seem to be always delayed, the food is often inedible and you seem to pay extra for everything.

Therefore imagine my surprise when i ended up on a jetBlue flight today and it has got to be one of the best domestic flights i have taken anywhere in the world. 

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I often find myself sitting in a aluminum tube at 30,000 feet for hours on end. I do lots of long haul flying and constantly feel the need to make sure that i use the time alone to make great progress.

So what do i do - i split my time into 3 broad buckets

1. Email processing - i love to get through my emails. My constant objective is to get to zero emails in the inbox. I am getting very good at the short - one line - answer. The team knows when i am off the plane as they get bombarded with emails. However i always make sure that they are short, direct and have an outcome.
2. General reading - i always carry around 5 - 10 pieces of reading. They are combinations of magazines i like to read and articles printed from the internet. The objective here is to finish them and leave them on the plane. I dont do not read confidential stuff on planes - you just never know. I also have the habit of ripping great articles from the magazines, scanning them and sharing them with the team.
3. Podcasts - i always have an ipod with me loaded with the most recent podcasts that i love to listen to. i try to get through as many as possible so that i am up to date with what is happening around the world.

Oh well … back on a plane.

I travel a lot for my roll as we continue to build out the business into new markets.  As such i get to travel on many and varied airlines and most of the time long haul.   So i thought i would start a new section of the site about what i really think about certain airlines and give you the real inside scoop.

My first victim is Emirates.

For those of you who dont know them, they are based out of Dubai in the Middle East and are one of the most progressive airlines (and countries). I have flown Emirates a few times and it is usually long haul and between Europe and Australia and Asia.

The Good

• Excellent service
• Great food
• Friendly cabin staff with great language skill - the are from around the world
• Dubai airport is wonderful
• The inflight entertainment system is second to none - hundreds of choices

The Bad

• The food services as SO SLOW - so if you want to work, you just have to be patient
• The seats are not the most modern and sleeping on them is really hard!
• Dont really have an alliance for frequent flyers - i am meant to be getting united points but they are yet to come through

The Ugly

• Not all planes are modern so if you are unlucky (usually between Middle East and locations in Europe) — the planes suck!
• On my last flight, the great entertainment system didnt work and there was nothing they could do about it — imagine 14 hours and no TV
• Check your flights - recently flew from Dubai to Rome but had to stop in Milan on the way - not fun!

Would be great to hear your travel stories

A week or so ago i wrote about the not so good service i received on a recent Emirates Airlines flight.  Well i thought i would go further than just bleating about it on this site.  I decided to write an email to the customer service people.

Now normally you write these things and nothing happens.  However, imagine my surprise when i received an email back from a customer service manager in Dubai followed by a phone call.  We chatted, he listened (VERY GOOD), and then explained how they have had problems, apologized (EVEN BETTER) and then outlined their improvement approach.  This was fantastic.

However, he then went one step further and offered my a free upgrade to the next class level on my next flight.  He didn’t need to do this but it has certainly created a strong customer and of course, i will make sure my people fly Emirates too.

Amazing what great customer service can do.

I was recently on a flight with my favourite airline (Emirates). I fly them often and have reached one of their highest frequent flyer levels. However they continue to annoy me as they have me down for a special meal when i dont want one. I have tried to cancel the special diet entry on my profile to no avail.

On the flight they said that they would change the profile but given my previous experiences i was not that hopeful.

Imagine my surprise today when i received the following email from the cabin manager from the flight

“As per our discussion on board the other evening, I contacted Frequent Flyer direct to review your special meal request. They advised me that there is no special meal request in your profile (which you can also view on line direct). They suggested it may be a problem with a booking agency or internal company booking profile. I hope I have been of assistance, however, if you are still experiencing problems, please contact me.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. This is great service and i was certainly not expecting it.

It is amazing how used we are to poor service. How we take the promises of service providers with a grain of salt and how we dont really expect people follow through.

The point is that it is easy to exceed customer expectations, especially when all those around us in competing and complementary industries are doing a great job at setting the standards so low. Ensure that you create a culture of promise delivery in your business - just meeting expectations can go along way to creating engaged and happy customers.