The Death of Customer Service
by Andy LloydWednesday, May 21st, 2008
Today American Airlines announced it would start charging passengers to check baggage.
While other company’s businesses are always complex and I try not to judge others, this strikes me as an extreme example of making a problem and making it worse. Traditional carriers like United and American are hemorrhaging money hand over fist while upstarts like Southwest, Jet Blue and Virgin America take market share from them. Their response? Start charging for things that used to be free (food, now bags) while instituting policies that make flying their airlines more unpleasant (crowded cabins just got worse, since everyone will try to carry everything on board). Seems like a recipe for driving customers screaming for the exits.At Fluid we take our responsibility for our customers’ satisfaction seriously and expect to deliver above expectations. It is our sincere hope that when customers are not happy with our delivery rather than charging them more to fix it we offer to increase our delivery to exceed our clients’ needs.
While it is just my opinion, the new policies airlines are instituting to try and squeeze every dime out of customers fly directly in the face of building a long term, successful customer relationship and business.