Today, I was flying from Bangalore to Mumbai in a 6Am flight operated by Indigo. There was a delay of 5 mins to start the boarding due to multiple reasons:
- There were not enough coaches to ferry the passengers to the aircrafts. The airline was boarding 3 flights simultaneously and looks like the capacity was only to board 2 flights.
- The security guard was late in arriving at the boarding gate.
Though this was something that the airline needed to get right everytime to ensure customer satisfaction, I think a delay of 5 minutes was something we could make up.
I was the first person in the que at the boarding gate and the person behind me was a part of the industry as he know a lot about the time it takes to board a flight, how the airline industry works. He was getting very impatient with the delay and started fussing about the delay. He started to continuously question the attendant about the delay. After a couple of minutes, he started questioning the competence of the attendants.
I shall appreciate the fact that the attendant for she was patient for all the time and did respond back to him respectfully.
Once we were through the boarding gate, we had to wait for a few minutes for the coaches to come to ferry us to the aircraft. The passenger i was referring to, again started fussing about the delay and started to question the competence of the airline staff and even got a bit personal.
Now, the flight took off about 10 mins late and arrived about 5 mins late at the destination.
Though it is important for all organizations to shore up their customer service, processes to ensure customer satisfaction, i think it is also our responsibility as a consumer to stop being a jerk and harassing the employees trying to help us.
As they say,
- if you have a negative feedback to share, do so individually. Write to the organization or tweet about this, but with dignity and not get personal.
- if you have a positive feedback, do share it openly with everyone. This will only increasingly reinforce this behavior and you will continue to get great service.
Have you seen similar behavior and what do you think about such behavior?
