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I always try not to have these blogs turn into a personal rant, but when traveling with my familiy the other day, we had an absolutely horrific branded customer experience, which resulted in us swearing to never fly an AirTran again. We are serious about that - not flying V Australia or any Virgin airline for that matter anytime soon either (see my blog posts from 2011)
The whole experience was disappointing, more specifically because AirTran has been acquired by SouthWest, and airline we know and love, so we were fully expecting a similar experience when flying AirTran. We were soreley disappointed, and for one reason: it came down to the behavior of ground personnel. We got ignored, barked at, pushed around, shoulder shrugged and blown off. It was, in short, one of the worst check in experiences in our history of flying around the world, and we have checked in for flights in some really small airports in some very obscure countries.
The fact that the plane was nice and clean, and that the staff onboard the airplane was more then professional and accomodating unfortunately didn't change much in our perception. Next time we need to go to upstate New York, we are flying Delta.
It begs the question though, what can be done to fix this? In this case, a decision needs to be made: can it be fixed using training and coaching, or would it be better to train a new, foreign-of-old-bad-habits team off site, and swap them with the old team when they are ready? Although I am a big proponent of training and coaching, I don't know enough about the business reality to make a recommendation.
I do know one thing: their training and mentoring has been sorely lacking in the past, and both them as their customers are paying the price for it. I refuse to believe these people are actively trying to make their customers miserable. So skill based training continuously is important, for anyone in your company. Talking them through your vision, mission and core branding statements, ensuring they understand and apply them, is equally important, and should be part of any company wide training plan.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
