What Happened to Customer Service?

Dear Tammy: What do you think about customer service in the airline industry today?

Tammy: Overall, there are a lot of good airlines who work hard to make their customers happy, but some airlines need lessons in customer service. For example, I know of one family who was scheduled to fly from Pittsburgh to St. Petersburg – Clearwater Airport, but the flight was delayed for seven hours! The family was given an $8 food voucher, but felt the customer service was extremely unprofessional. One of the members even heard the customer reps say they were going to breakfast and if anyone needed them to tell them "they can wait ‘till we get back" and then laughed.

The family called the airline’s upper management to explain the situation and how several members would miss work. Upper management compensated the customer on the flights, which made the client happy, but when the customers finally boarded the plane five hours later, the hostesses asked for the boarding passes again, even though they had already seen them already. The hostess then asked her daughter to get off the plane, saying that the customers had canceled their flights, which they hadn’t. Allegiant had refunded the family for the inconvenience, but that is considered a cancellation.

More miscommunication. She had told Allegiant that her kids were sleeping on the floor and waiting for the plane. The airlines gave her two options. Wait until the next day for the next flight to PIE/TPA or be charged and reimbursed for the flights.  Since she didn’t have enough credit on her card to charge the flight and needed to get home, the airline refused to let her talk to anyone else. “This conversation went from bad to worse as she rudely told us that Allegiant would not help, even though it was their error that caused us to be escorted off of an airplane. We were stranded now for more than seven hours and then the plane left us without our luggage (also a federal regulation violation).”

Never once was there empathy or an apology and the only reason upper management listened is because one of the travelers put a formal complaint against them with the FAA. The customers felt like they were treated unfairly, including how much they were being refunded.

The customers moved over to Southwest Airlines where the service was outstanding and the airline even gave the customers a discount. The customer wrote, “Two of us actually cried when the Southwest agent said they were discounting our tickets ... there are companies and people who care.  We finally got home a little after midnight.”

First, an all-day delay is inexcusable, but customer service seems to be forgotten in the travel industry these days. That boggles my mind, because in today’s tech savvy world, a one-on-one customer service experience that is posted on the internet can suddenly become an airline’s worst nightmare. Customers who don’t feel appreciated won’t return to use the same business. This needs to change immediately. Airlines need to care about their customers.