Customer care at airports seems to have reached all all-time low in the UK this week. Stories of people being thrown out of airports and threatened with the police, and many other stories of appalling service, are all over the media. So what can be done?
Often, in challenging situations, customer service is left to the lowest paid and most inexperienced people in a business. Many of the people who are left to deal with unhappy customers at airports (and railway stations) during times of disruption receive little or no training in dealing with awkward situations and the communication they receive is often non-existent. So, they can’t tell you what they don’t know. I know – after twenty years of working in front line roles.
Contrast the chaos that has been reported during the big freeze this winter with what used to happen at GNER, the railway company I worked for between 1996 and 2003. Customer service disruption meant that senior managers and directors, led by the Chief Executive, Christopher Garnett, who won the Customer Service Leader of the Year award at the National Customer Service Awards in 1999, would come out on to stations and trains and lead from the front; actually dealing with customer concerns themselves. Everyone rallied round and helped, because we were being motivated and inspired by the role models within the business.
I think that is what is missing in the response from many companies in the transport industry this year. You would think that we would have moved on, but in terms of the experience offered to customers in the UK, we have moved backwards since the 1990’s. A great first step in putting this right would be for all staff from all companies involved in customer service, particularly in public transport, hospitality and retail, to enrol on the Customer Service Training that is being made available across the UK from next year. In my opinion, there is nothing more important in an organisation than customer service, and every function within a business should be supporting customer service, creating a customer service culture throughout the organisation. I had the great pleasure of working in a business like that for several years, and it inspired me to do what I do now.