Nigerian airlines have a steep hill to climb in order
to gain customer’s confidence after several crashes, continuous delays, planes
falling apart, dirty seats and sub-par customer service standards.
Most of all, Arik Air had the toughest job after last
year’s fiasco, with serial delays, cancellations and eventually AMCON taking
over management.
One would have thought that Arik would have learned
from its mistakes and its efforts would’ve been directed where it mattered: Its
customers.
Unfortunately, my experience there was not the case
and all the details can be found here:
My perspective:
Cards on
the table; I am a customer service manager and I tend to see certain angles
that “regular” customers don’t. Hence I can be more critical than others, but I
can also understand the customer service team in certain cases.
Arik is
always my last choice when booking a flight, due to almost confirmed delays and
difficult customer experience.
You can
go on their facebook account and it’s filled with comments of disgruntled
customers, some who had their flights cancelled, others who are still waiting
for a refund 6 months down the line.
This
does not come as a coincidence and something should be done, both to regain
customers’ confidence in Arik AND the rest of the Nigerian local airline
industry.
I firmly
believe that the whole industry gets affected when the overall experience is
usually bad and one of the main actors keeps lowering the bar.
Impact
of this experience:
Unless I
have to save someone from a fire, I prefer not to fly Arik.
At this
rate, the airline will only fly the passengers that have no choice and other
airlines are seeing that and taking advantage of it.
That is
indeed a recipe for failure.
What can
Arik do to remedy this situation?
In no
particular order:
1. 1) Improve their phone centre waiting time
AND quality of the phone lines:
a.
It is quite enraging when you wait for
15 mins only for the line to drop while you’re still waiting or sometimes when
you’re talking to an agent that doesn’t call you back.
b.
Waiting more than 5 minutes is already a
complete no-no in the industry as people don’t have time to lose and most of
the time they are very short on time.
c.
Arik should implement a toll free phone
line since I’m sure a lot of people have had their conversation cut short
because they got short on credit…..due to the long waiting time
2.
2) Improve their customer service officers’
training:
a.
While niceties are welcome in a way, but
insincere ones are actually worse.
It is
not secret that customer service
officers are given a strict script to follow and at some point it becomes
ridiculous how impersonal that is.
For ex:
when I have an issue, I always hear: “We are very sorry for this
inconvenience”, which is fair, BUT when they can’t fix the issue and their
answer is the standard: “We apologize for this inconvenience” which I just
heard 5 minutes before, then I know for a fact you don’t really care. You just
want to get it over with because you couldn’t help and you threw all
responsibilities back on me.
What to
do? Fix the issue, or it’s a failure.
b.
On many occasions I was at the airport
and their ground staff were less than helpful. For example to know if there’s a
delay. Most of the times I either get told to wait or I get lied to (they say
there’s no delay even though the plane should have taken off 30 mins ago)
So I
call the customer service line hoping to get better answers or clarifications,
and their answers is almost always: “Sir, go and talk to the officer on the
ground”.
This
actually enrages me as they’re basically ordering me to go and talk to someone,
who I already explained that they were less than helpful. I have to insist
several times until they actually do call the officer on the ground and get me
the answers.
What to
do? Handle it from the beginning. Ask if I’ve spoken to the officer and if I
did/didn’t they should be the one calling them to get the information I need
c.
If a customer asks for a manager, make
sure he’s available within the next 5 mins and confirm that he will call back
within the next 10 mins.
d.
Also ensure that a manager is ALWAYS on
seat. I’ve heard so many times the excuse that the manager is not on seat. How
is this even close to acceptable?
If a
customer is asked to speak with a manager, than this means that they are
extremely angry and the company is on the verge of losing a client.
3.
3) Increase the synergy between operations
and customer service:
a.
Customer service is the front line in
any company, and operations are the ones making sure everything works smoothly.
Basically, CS’s responsibility is to both provide clarification for clients on
miscellaneous issues and clean up the operations’ department’s mistakes.
b.
In my case, the operations failed to
allow a customer change their ticket online or over the phone, they want
customers to drive, sometimes for hours, to pay NGN 2,000 just to change their
flight ticket.
c.
What to do? Improve your system, make it
seamless, make your customer experience easy like Air Peace for example which
allows you to change the ticket online within seconds.
In
short, get into the 21st century!
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| Contributor: Jade Dawaliby, Head Customer Service, Liebherr Nigeria |
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