Let’s wrap 2019 with a feel good CX story shall we?
Generally, there’s a lot of poor customer experience everywhere we go. As a result of that, there is a lot of write-ups and stories about bad experiences, terrible customer service and how organization’s brand promise and unmet customer expectations. They say that a customer with a bad experience is twice as likely to share the bad news compared to a good experience so perhaps some good CX news will be a good end to 2019. More so at this time of the year where we should be celebrating another year. Here’s to Menzies Aviation of Perth Airport, Australia.
Lost and delayed baggage is any traveller’s nightmare. On a recent trip to Australia, we had a delayed bag. It seems that we were not the only unfortunate travelers so obviously, the departure airport had forgotten a bunch of other bags as well. It is definitely not something anyone wants at the beginning of a vacation.
The first step was to obviously contact the airport baggage handling services and make a lost or delayed baggage report. This was done relatively quickly an efficiently at Perth Airport. The staff handling this was calm and organized despite facing multiple irate travelers. We were slightly more fortunate as we had only one missing bag out of two but others were less lucky when none of their bags arrived. They promised to update me in 3-4 hours by which they should have traced the bags. The staff confidence was assuring. A critical key to delivering excellent customer experience is service recovery – no matter where the problem came from, service recovery improves your brand value in terms of CX.
They promptly contacted me around 8pm (our flight landed at 4:30pm and the report was made at 5pm) to inform me that they’ve traced the bag and it was already loaded on the 7pm flight and on the way over. That flight would land at 1:30am and they will follow-up the next morning to ensure delivery of the bag. Clear, concise information with action to resolve the problem is what defines CX excellence.
Now comes the critical part – service hand-over from the service team to the delivery team. They did an excellent job here. They called at 7am to ascertain my address but I was going out for breakfast. Not an issue it seems as the driver would be flexible and call. They finally met me at where I was having breakfast at 8am to deliver the bag. This final follow-up is key to the entire customer experience. Many organizations succeed at some stage such as at the contact center or the over-the-counter service but service hand-over, like a relay race, passing the customer from one team to another often encounters drops and road-blocks.
Well done Menzies Aviation – this is a great example of service recovery through no fault of theirs and delivering a great customer experience. I note that there is nothing special in the whole incident – it is just a process executed well with empowered people. This means that good CX is achievable by any organization.
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all our readers! Wishing you all the best joy this season with friends and family from all of us here at Brandt International.
