{"id":29,"date":"2004-06-16T19:49:14","date_gmt":"2004-06-17T02:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/index.php\/archives\/2004\/06\/16\/what-air-canada-does-wrong\/"},"modified":"2005-07-06T13:01:01","modified_gmt":"2005-07-06T20:01:01","slug":"what-air-canada-does-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2004\/06\/what-air-canada-does-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Service at Air Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Air Canada has a bad repu\u00adta\u00adtion these days; in many ways they are a case study for what not to do in cus\u00adtom\u00ader ser\u00advice. I recently flew on Air Canada and had some delays in the flight. The way most of the Air Canada staff handled the situ\u00adation just proved that bad cus\u00adtom\u00ader ser\u00advice makes for extremely upset cus\u00adtom\u00aders. It would have been so easy for Air Canada to not make things worse, if they\u2019d just fol\u00adlowed a couple of basic cus\u00adtom\u00ader ser\u00advice rules. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The story: I was com\u00ading back from the con\u00adfer\u00adence<\/a> selec\u00adtion meet\u00ading, fly\u00ading from Boston to Van\u00adcouver via Montreal. The first flight was delayed by an hour due to mech\u00adan\u00adic\u00adal prob\u00adlems so I asked at the desk what the altern\u00adat\u00adives were and what I should do. The answer to (a) was none since altern\u00adat\u00adive routes were over\u00adsold (in itself a prob\u00adlem) and (b) was that an agent would meet the flight in Montreal and help me get on the flight to Van\u00adcouver. At that stage it was show\u00ading in their sys\u00adtem as a tight con\u00adnec\u00adtion, but not a missed con\u00adnec\u00adtion, so there was hope.<\/p>\n

I was in the front seat, first off the plane, and asked the agent who met the flight (Air Canada Montreal agent 1) what to do, expect\u00ading her to know about the situ\u00adation since the agents in Boston had expressly said that they were noti\u00adfy\u00ading Montreal of the prob\u00adlem. She told me to keep going through immig\u00adra\u00adtion and cus\u00adtoms to the flight. Although we had landed at the far end of the ter\u00admin\u00adal, I made it through immig\u00adra\u00adtion and cus\u00adtoms in record time (walk\u00ading fast and run\u00adning a lot of the way) and headed to the check-in counter, where I asked about the flight to Van\u00adcouver. Air Canada Montreal agent 2 told me to keep going and what gate to head for. So, through secur\u00adity, and on to the far end of the ter\u00admin\u00adal (of course!). The gate is show\u00ading noth\u00ading by that stage so I ask Air Canada Montreal agent 3 where the flight is and she points out the win\u00addow and says \u201cthat\u2019s the one they\u2019re push\u00ading out now\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hav\u00ading gone all that way and being told to keep going by all the Air Canada staff, and stand\u00ading there watch\u00ading the plane being pushed out, I was under\u00adstand\u00adably and vis\u00adibly upset. So what does Air Canada Montreal agent 3 do to help? She goes into her office and shuts the door. After I\u2019d calmed down and watched the plane take off, she opened the door, said \u201cyou have to go to tick\u00adet\u00ading to rebook the flight\u201d and shut the door again. <\/p>\n

Even\u00adtu\u00adally I found my way to the tick\u00adet\u00ading counter, and finally found an Air Canada agent who was sym\u00adpath\u00adet\u00adic, and offered to call a super\u00advisor to talk to me about what had happened. And for the flight the next morn\u00ading they put me in busi\u00adness class (which I figured was the least they could do). The super\u00advisor agreed that I\u2019d done everything right and the vari\u00adous Air Canada agents I\u2019d run into had done a lot of things wrong. Mind you, I did\u00adn\u2019t get the impres\u00adsion that this was an isol\u00adated occur\u00adrence, or a prob\u00adlem that is going to be fixed any time soon.<\/p>\n

Rather than write a gen\u00ader\u00adal rant about Air Canada, I tried to dis\u00adtill a couple of rules from the exper\u00adi\u00adence that apply to oth\u00ader ser\u00advice-based com\u00adpan\u00adies, not just air\u00adlines. What Air Canada did wrong is fairly basic: Air Canada Montreal agents 1 through 3 did\u00adn\u2019t fol\u00adlow the under\u00adly\u00ading ten\u00adets of cus\u00adtom\u00ader ser\u00advice, which are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. keep the cus\u00adtom\u00ader informed<\/li>\n
  2. when things go wrong, be pre\u00adpared to listen and to call a super\u00advisor to fix what can be fixed<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Air Canada Montreal agent 1 (who met the flight from Boston) knew of the tight con\u00adnec\u00adtion (I had that con\u00adfirmed by the retick\u00adet\u00ading agent) and should have checked the status so she could tell me wheth\u00ader I\u2019d make the flight or not, rather than duck\u00ading respons\u00adib\u00adil\u00adity and just send\u00ading me on my way.<\/p>\n

    Air Canada Montreal agent 2 (whom I asked at the check-in counter) should have said \u201chold on, let me check\u201d and radi\u00adoed the depar\u00adture gate of the flight to Van\u00adcouver to see if it was worth send\u00ading me through secur\u00adity and down the far end of the ter\u00admin\u00adal; they might have held the flight for the 3\u20134 minutes it took me to get there if it had\u00adn\u2019t already closed.<\/p>\n

    Air Canada Montreal agent 3 (who was at the neigh\u00adbour\u00ading depar\u00adture gate) should have shown some empathy or sym\u00adpathy, listened, and\/or offered to call a super\u00advisor. Going in the office and osten\u00adta\u00adtiously shut\u00adting the door was not in any way helpful.<\/p>\n

    The retick\u00adet\u00ading agent did everything right. One out of four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Air Canada has a bad repu\u00adta\u00adtion these days; in many ways they are a case study for what not to do in cus\u00adtom\u00ader ser\u00advice. I recently flew on Air Canada and had some delays in the flight. The way most of the Air Canada staff handled the situ\u00adation just proved that bad cus\u00adtom\u00ader ser\u00advice makes for extremely upset cus\u00adtom\u00aders. It would have been so easy for Air Canada to not make things worse, if they\u2019d just fol\u00adlowed a couple of basic cus\u00adtom\u00ader ser\u00advice rules. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}