This winter is a huge challenging one for air travel. Hopefully, you haven’t found yourself on a cancelled flight. I wasn’t so lucky and while waiting on standby, I was annoyed by the possible lack of customer service from the airline. But, I met one ticket agent (let’s call her, “Grace”) who “got it” and I salute three principles she used that made many stranded travelers feel a lot better about their experience. These lessons can apply to any business.
Information is priceless. People get frustrated rapidly when they don’t know what’s going on. ritardo volo aereo The panic that comes with cancelled travel plans is multiplied when you can’t get a direct answer from airline staff. Too often it appears as though you’re purposely sent into a long line only to learn that the agent in front doesn’t have idea what’s going on. Grace got on the loudspeaker and admitted that she didn’t have all the answers for the hundreds of men and women who were waiting to catch a standby flight. But she did explain the method of getting everyone to his / her destination. Grace also let people know that when these were in the standby system, these were inside until they got on a plane. This kept many from fretting about whether they’d need certainly to re-register each time they tried to catch a fresh flight on standby.
Pay attention to concerns but don’t forget your needs. While Grace was willing to listen to traveler questions and concerns, she realized that she had been asked the exact same questions again and again. This kept her from doing her other duties, which included getting as much standby customers on the following flight. So she gave out all the info once more and asked that individuals leave her alone. And she asked for those folks who had been waiting for some time to let any newcomers know the thing that was going on. By enlisting the crowd, she gave us something do to and allowed her to serve us better.
Humor never hurts. There’s plenty of tension in an airport when it’s set with unhappy people. Grace would use humor in her announcements and that brought a laugh to even the absolute most tired traveler. “Trust in me,” she said with a sarcastic smile, “We want to get you out of here as much as you do.” That sentence let everyone understand that this is a tough day for people that have tickets as well as the airlines. By using humor to acknowledge this aspect, an unpleasant situation became less adversarial.
My only regret from that day was that I forget to have Grace’s complete name or employee number. I could have sent a letter of recommendation to her airline about her excellent customer service. For now, allow me to just say, Grace, you had been amazing!