Poor Customer Relationship Management During Travel Disruptions

This is now the third time this year in the UK that many airports and airlines have been unable to reorganise their infrastructure in advance to cope with the forecast heavy snow fall, in order to feedback effectively to their customers.

This begs the question as to why many were so underprepared at a time where passenger experience is paramount. Moreover, have lessons really been learnt?

The unanimous complaint from travellers surrounds the severe lack of communication of up-to-date and accurate information.

Passenger's arduous attempts to gather information about their travel were futile. Websites are telling travellers that their flights are scheduled as normal, despite the runways continuing to be closed.

At Heathrow's Terminal 5, for example, frustrated customers wasted hours on the same redundant phone line and identical generic automated voicemail recordings for all flight disruptions.

Days after heavy snow fell the uncertainty as to whether many passengers will could get to their destinations for Christmas remained. Acknowledging that snow in the British Isles is no longer a phenomenon, combined with the fact that this is the 21st Century means that customer communication failures to this extent should not be happening.

Much of the disruption was unnecessary and could have been significantly alleviated with sufficient planning and a flexible system in place to efficiently reorganise the management of infrastructure to adapt to the adverse weather. This would have not only enabled airports, airlines and travel agencies to better manage and resolve the deluge of customer complaints and enquiries, but would facilitate more proactive forms of response and customer relationship management.

More robust and sophisticated infrastructures to provide multiple layers of customer support; capture and analyse customer enquiries and complaints, to then categorise and respond appropriately through mediums such as regular website, Twitter and SMS updates, should be a priority for those in the travel industry.

Documenting and utilising all processes and communications in a transparent, centralised repository for easy and efficient reference, retrieval, and reporting of customer communications enables the customer services representative to provide the customer with an informed response at the first point of contact. This avoids the frustration to customers of being routed through automated IVR processes or a series of call handlers before their query can even be acknowledged.

With the snow and ice predicted to linger, customer backlogs will only increase, and the surge of complaints that will naturally ensue from unhappy customers will further test the responsiveness of airlines. Will they be listened to? Will they feel they are being brushed off or treated seriously? This will be the decisive moment of the customers' experience.

Whilst some airlines have improved their efforts this time to communicate to their customers, through improved website communication for example, it will remain unclear as to what the customers are expecting in return - only those that take the time to complain will give the airlines that information. What's more, airlines will only be able to act on this if they have the infrastructure to capture the complaints to make them available for reporting and Root Cause Analysis.

Whilst customer complaints are emotive at the best of times, the fact that many travel bodies underestimated the potential of this chaos not only at one of their busiest times of year but at a time when customer experience and dissatisfaction are probably at their most passionate, could have been easily mitigated had the right measures been in place. Time will tell if airlines can redeem themselves in the aftermath of the disruptions.

Source: Mark Chambers, head of solution consulting, CDC Software
 

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