Just because it’s a bad experience doesn’t mean you can’t fix it
Everyone has a horror story about traveling so it should come as no surprise that I’m writing about one of mine. The issue was bad, the employees were nearly useless yet resolution was nearly shocking in how GOOD it was. So how do we as corporate employees respond to an issue when you’re potentially sitting thousands of miles away and what take aways can we all learn from the good and bad experiences we have in the real world to apply to our own business.
Everyone has a horror story about traveling so it should come as no surprise that I’m writing about one of mine. Only in my horror story, the fairy godmother (or in this case airline executive) comes down and makes everything better. So let’s begin.
My story starts out as most airline stories do, in an airport, on a trip, hoping to just get home. My flight for the evening was Oakland to Orange County (SNA), the drive is all of 6 hours so you can imagine how short the flight is, and it’s a route I’ve taken more often than I care to admit. If you’re not familiar with the airport, SNA has some particular intricacies, mostly in its operating hours. Due to noise issues in the fairly residential location the airport is in, they close to arrivals well before 11. So when I heard my flight, the last flight into SNA was late, I assumed it was bump time and prepared myself to make the trek down from Los Angeles where they generally fly bumped planes into. As we waited the plane got pushed back further and further and further yet the gate agents insisted we would still make it in (makes sense of course, it costs a lot of money to get a plane full of people to one airport and drive them down to another). The crowd was so amped up to make this flight that when they told us we’d have less than 10 minutes to board and go, everyone rushed and it worked… if only every flight could board as quick and smoothly as that one did.
Of course this is a horror story so there’s no way we made it back to SNA. Nope. The pilot didn’t want to rush out (no problem, I’d rather make it safely than leave quick enough to make a flight but with a fuel hose connected to the bottom of a plane) so we sat. This is where the problems began because of course no one was expecting to sit around and wait. In our rush to board people had tossed books into bags, dumped their snacks and were only ready to survive a 50 minute flight. Seated up near the front of the plane I could see conversations going on and pleasantries being exchanged so I knew we had a long wait ahead of us. It turned out to only be an hour, but when you consider that the flight is shorter then that and we were all being rerouted, it wasn’t something anyone was pleased with – nor were we pleased to have to wait that full hour before we were told anything.
To take a quick step back, before we boarded I had mentioned to the gate agents that the airport closes. They responded with “of course it does, we know this” but what I was getting at, and what I (and several other passengers explained) was that when an airport closes it doesn’t just mean nothing arrives or takes off. It means every door gets locked and everyone customers interact with is gone. As the story unfolds you’ll see why this matters.
Anyways, after an hour on the ground we depart, now about 2
