BOOST Business Coaching

Customer Service has been a hot topic over the past two or three posts. I am currently waiting at Auckland airport for a flight to Wellington. Unfortunately I took the step of booking with Jet Star. Jet Star is the latest airline to enter the New Zealand Domestic market. We should encourage competition. It keeps service levels sharp and pricing competitive….

I arrived at 4.00 for a 5.10 flight. At 4.45pm I headed to the departure lounge as instructed on my boarding pass. Myself and roughly 120 or so other passengers were then left holding our tickets until 6.15pm when they finally announced that the flight was in fact delayed until 8.15pm. Why leave us waiting. It became clearly obvious at 5.10pm that the flight was in all probability going to be delayed… Jet Star broke one of the golden rules of customer service… communicate. No one minds when flights are delayed – doing so usually means that the airline has your safety foremost. Yet no announcements, not even an acknowledgement to those 120 co-passengers. This sort of story is unfortunately too common in the airline industry… This is not a moan just an observation….. and this also raises opportunities for my Wellington Small Business advice clients… Let me explain….

If a large corporate like Jet Star who have just invested $250 m in New Zealand allow their service to be pretty intermittent like this how about your Competitors. How are your competitors treating their customers?.. Is there any way you or your business can lift the game in your Industry. ? Air new Zealand recently offered any stranded passengers with Jet Star $50 dollar flights… is there any way you can do this in your industry?

Jeff Smith
Wellington Business Coaching