The Airport and the Airline

Consider the plight of the hundreds of travellers who were stranded at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 during the last few weeks. These customers of British Airways and British Airports Authority were angry, exhausted and complaining about their customer service entitlement.

 

Agnes Huffy[1] is an American consultant who advises airports and airlines. Her services might have come at a high premium last month at Heathrow, where the airport operator was blaming the airline in the early stages of the critical breakdown of services. The customers felt that their entitlement was going to be serviced by the airline because they were the service provider that had ‘taken’ their money. The roller coasters of customers’ emotions were probably matched evenly but in private by predictable waves of blame and confusion where airline and airport took turns in allocating fault.

 

Agnes Huffy, writing at a different time in relation to entitlement says “I was always under the impression that the delivery of good customer service was a key objective for all public contact jobs. I thought that a company’s success and survival depended upon its ability to provide excellent service to distinguish and differentiate itself from the competition. Today, it appears that such differentiating factors include a growing number of complaints about “service,” which many feel has disappeared not only from our vocabulary, but also from our overall travel experience”.

 

No Agnes, it is still there but customers seem to have become used to accepting declining levels of service in all spheres of the customer/service provider relationship. There seems to a cultural shift in accepting less for paying more. Someone was saying that service is better in Loitokitok.

 

Agnes Huffy goes on to ask, “ Have we irreversibly learned during our formative years to expect more than what is realistic? Perhaps our ambition and will to succeed creates a false sense of entitlement that we carry throughout our life experience. To understand the root of the issue, perhaps we need to consider the source. If you ask the disgruntled why they are disgruntled, we usually find it stems from a combination of a pre-conceived lack of trust, and an innate belief that they automatically deserve to get the most — regardless of the level of output or investment on their par”.

While I think I know where Agnes Huffy is coming from, I would not have said what she says next within ten miles of Heathrow Airport. Agnes Huffy says “ In a society where people are constantly clamouring to get the most out of everyday experiences in life, whether in business, travelling, playing, or at home, our perpetual expectation is to always get what we want. When this does not materialize according to our expectations, and in as timely a manner as we anticipate, we become frustrated, impatient and irritated, often generalizing the past negative experiences and perhaps even blowing them out of proportion. These negative mind patterns then continue to repeat themselves and become oppressive to our overall worldview”.

The customer for public services in Britain is described by labels, which reflect the different expectations of the service provider and the recipient. When my local council does not collect my rubbish bin, I may be classified as a disgruntled ‘resident’. But is the expectation of a reliable collection of my bin also not my entitlement?  Leave my bin outside for a day and the cat from 11 houses away will expose chicken tikka massalla that I did not share with him- he loves my food more than his own.

Armando Martinez, who works in the rather esoteric and higher-level world of ‘telcos’- telecommunications companies providing broadband and other personal media related services says, “ Entitlement is the process of authorizing a service (a music or broadcast TV channel, pay per view, etc.) or content (a movie, program, game or special event) to a customer. Entitlement also includes the assignment of rights, which are the rules that govern how services and content can be used”. Entitlement management systems are increasingly needed in Britain’s public sector. These systems should be capable of managing complex functionalities and challenges, such as those of collecting my bin, repairing my road, cleaning the street in live in and educating me to learn more about recycling the waste that my household generates. Is my local council’s entitlement management system able to track what service its customers, not ‘residents’ need? Has the council invested in capable systems to track how services are provided and how the delivery of entitlement is monitored by them?

Did the attributes provided below apply to the situation at Heathrow Aiport?  Could one have switched the labels? How many customers might have gone home feeling that it was service providers who were unhelpful, inattentive, impolite and unprofessional?

Customers		Service Providers
·         Unreasonable ·         Angry ·         Upset ·         Disrespectful ·         Demanding		·         Helpful ·         Gracious ·         Attentive ·         Polite ·         Professional

Agnes Huffy: “To have proper perspective, we need to adjust our way of approaching customer service interactions and communications. We should not expect rude treatment, and we should definitely not be so surprised when we experience kindness, consideration, and attentive customer care”.

Campaign for Customer Entitlement (presently with just one member) will be examining issues relating to customers’ right to service -entitlement, especially in relation to services. While the content will be drawn largely from public sector experience, there will also be occasional coverage of service delivery in business. The public sector has a lot to learn from business but the reverse is also true. 

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[1] Agnes Huffy, “Customer Service in an Era of Entitlement”. Airport Business, www.airportbusiness.com