This is a key to customer service excellence especially when things go wrong. QANTAS has been in the news lately and not for the best of reasons. The latest was an incident involving at 767 travelling to Manila that had to return to Sydney because of a hydraulic leak.
Until recently, I have been a bit of a fan of QANTAS keeping their customers informed about delays and when things go wrong. However, QANTAS has gone off the boil on this one recently. My own experience a couple of weeks ago was on the “midnight horror” or “red eye special” that is scheduled to leave Perth just after midnight and arrive in Sydney just after 6am. The flight was finally cancelled at 3am (O joy!) because of a bird strike in engine 1 on its final approach into Perth. We were left in the dark on a number of occasions when we were told nothing! At times we were told we would be updated on the latest status at certain times but no announcements were given when expected. Management of customer expectations is the key to customer service excellence. In my case, there was only the emotion of anger. In the case of QF19 on August 2, passengers would have had the emotion of fear. Customer emotions must be managed, especially in times of customer stress.
A number of passenger comments were recorded by the Sydney Morning Herald in their report on August 2. Click here to read it.
Here’s the question for you and your organisation. What documented policies and procedures do you have in place to communicate with your customers when things go wrong to manage your customers’ expectations?
