As I didn’t have much else I could do, I got to thinking about what responsibilities to its customers a business has if it has a near monopoly position.

Qantas is a great example of a business with a near monopoly position on the Australia – USA routes. Your choices on the route are limited to Qantas, United Airlines and if you don’t mind going via New Zealand, Air New Zealand. Given the frightful quality of United Airlines and the desire to go non-stop between the two countries, you are really don’t have any choice except for Qantas.

Now Qantas charges their customers up to $14,000 for a business class seat. This is a hefty price to pay given a seat in Economy is probably costing around $3,000. So what is the expectation of someone paying four to five times the cost of an economy seat? You want the legroom and the ability to lie down, access to power in the seat so you can work if needed and entertainment to keep you amused. Everything else is secondary in justifying the massive price difference. The business class food is just not that good!

The area that Qantas seems to fall down is in its entertainment system. Qantas touts its award winning entertainment system as giving the view a massive selection of films and TV shows to watch. The problem is that it doesn’t work all the time. In fact, I think the cabin crew have become experts at rebooting the system and placating disappointed customers. I have accumulated a range of duty free vouchers and bottles of wine as an apology for the system not working.

As Qantas has a virtual monopoly on the route I think it has an obligation to go above and beyond in the delivery of its service to its customers. While it could be argued that they can get away with average service in Economy, the business and first class traveller expects and deserves more. How hard can it be to identify what is important to these customer segments and to make sure that these important things are delivered faultlessly. For me, I am more interested in being entertained for 14 hours rather than the next greatest Neil Perry dish.

In addition to making sure that the customer service is delivered faultlessly, it is important that when things go wrong (as they will), the employees are trained to handle the situation properly. More often than not, when I raise the entertainment system issue with Qantas the cabin crew initially apologies (great) and then lay blame with management. Well from a customer’s perspective, I don’t care. What I do care about is the experience I am having now and the impact that is having on my overall product experience.

Offering me duty free vouchers and bottles of wine doesn’t always make the experience better. It ameliorates the problem at the time however there is still a bad taste left in my mouth after the complete experience.
I am flying Qantas again from Australia back to the US in a couple of weeks and am hoping for a better experience – we will see! I look forward to some more competition on the route with the launch of Virgin Pacific in February. Perhaps this will shake the complacent Qantas from its customer service slumber.

As a post script … they lost my bags!!!

jetBlue Logo

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. 

The first thing you notice is the amazingly simple check in procedure.  Getting my boarding pass electronically was a breeze – even when i didnt know my booking reference number.  The baggage drop off queue was short, the process was a simple and the staff we very friendly. 

Once I crawled through security, i thought i would grab some food for the flight.  I was surprised to see a health food store – there right in the terminal – and the selection of food i could take on the flight was amazing.  Unlike more airports where deep frying is the norm, the broad selection made finding a healthy alternative easy.

The next thing you notice is that people everywhere are online.  Why?  Well the internet in the terminal was FREE.  Yes FREE!!  They seem to have made the decision to give away internet access in the terminal.  It made a nice change from having to pull out the credit card to pay some exorbinent fee for 30 mins of connection.

On the plane you immediately notice two things.  Firstly the seats (all the seats) have great leg room – more than i usually get on a domestic flight.  Secondly – there is a tv screen in every seat and you have access to Direct TV and 40+ channels.  And the best news – it was FREE.  Yep – i was able to watch, coast to coast, Direct TV for nothing.

Overall this has to be the most pleasant domestic flight i have ever had.  jetBlue seems to get customer serivce and they get it right.  Not bad for a $200 flight from New York to San Francisco!

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.

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

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.

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.