3 Key Customer Service Lessons From a Nightmarish Call With an Airline
Like many others, I have the somewhat first-world problem of having a few flights canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic that turned the world on its head.
I’m looking especially at you, migrants and people who planned a holiday over Easter or early Summer.
This has made me a creditor of sorts to a couple of airlines, having a few dozen pounds “trapped” with two of them. The more astute airline awarded me a hassle-free voucher straightaway, hoping I cash it back with them once the situation normalizes, as is progressively the case today.
My first problem came when I tried to do exactly that.
Hoping to combine the voucher with the measly miles I accumulated over the course of 3 years coming back and forth to my hometown on holidays, I jumped over to the airline’s website to book a trip — with no success.
That left me no other option than calling up the airline’s call center. The issue, perhaps predictable, was that 2 hours later — one waiting for my call to get picked up, the other with an employee on the line — I was still nowhere closer to booking my flight.
So what the hell happened? And what can any customer-facing organization learn from it?
