Do We Want to Know When Service is Not Going to be Available?

For those of us that consumes services, any kind of services we all do not want interruptions to those services. Just imagine you are in an airport and suddenly the entire flight control system goes down without notice, this will create chaos and delays and for customers frustrations, stress and unhappiness. Just imagine you are one of those passengers stuck in the airport and have an emergency to attend to, how would you feel? Same is true for basic services like electricity and water, now adays we are so used to seamless services that interruptions becomes a very big deal and a sources of frustrations. Having said that there are still countries where service interruptions are normal and for them they have adapted to that way of life, became part of the culture so service interruptions are just an annoyance. For those of us who are used to good and seamless services will we accept such mentality to be imposed on us in terms of service interruptions? Will you hire a service provider with this kind of mentality or culture?

In today’s highly mobile and digital world, mobile data has become a basic service. It is embedded in our daily lives that we can no longer live without it. How do we feel if suddenly there is no communications service, we can’t browse the internet, we can’t watch streaming videos, we can’t communicate instantly? It will feel like we are back to the stone age, it will create chaos and a lot of frustration to many and in some cases affected customers will churn and switch a different service provider.

Now service interruptions are unavoidable since as  a service provider there is a need to schedule maintenance, to improve services to ensure continuity of services. Would it reduce stress and frustration if customers are notified correctly of such interruptions? Consider Telenor in Sweden, they notify customers by SMS for scheduled interruptions, surely this is a good thing since as a customer you know when you will not have any services available. However as customers we also do not want to receive service notifications that do not affect us since it becomes an annoyance. Just imagine you are in the Maldives enjoying your vacation, then suddenly you receive service notifications every hour, won’t you be annoyed?

There is of course an ideal way of notifying customers for service interruptions, that is only notify customers who are directly affected by such interruption at a specific time. This can be done by Geo-fencing, the challenge of course is how to effective implement Geo-fencing without sounding like big brother watching every customer.

Customer Service and Humanity

In the past two weeks I flew in out of 14 countries, 16 flights in total considering return flights to Sweden… During this two weeks I observed very different levels of service amongst the various airlines.

The best was with Turkish Airlines, friendly and helpful cabin crew. The worse was with Malaysian Airlines with very rude cabin crew especially the flight from Manila to Kuala Lumpur. The low point was when the crew started telling passengers (actually I was one of them) that the toilets are unavailable due to the Pilot declaring emergency situation. However there was no seat-belt signs turned on and no announcement from the Pilot. In the background the crew were chatting and laughing together every time they command a passenger who want to use the toilet to take a seat. Considering that Malaysia Airlines is in a dire financial situation I can clearly understand why, their service is amongst the worst in the world and to make fun of passengers is such a very low point.

 

If Malaysian airline can not improve their service they will definitely go out of business no matter how much money the government will put in to rescue the airline. I have criticized Turkish Airlines in the past but their service have improved dramatically over the years and is now one of the best airlines in the world. What made the difference is putting a touch of humanity to their service…

When we look at customer service, for example in Telecom, each mobile operator would like to lower the cost but at the same time still deliver a wonderful customer experience. This is being achieved by providing customer are in various channels. One channel in particular is the most effective, directly from a customer’s device… where customer service can be automated and enhance but still maintaining the the human touch. Operators like DiGi and Malaysia and Smartfren in Indonesia are starting to implement this improved customer experience programs and are perfecting their user interfaces to give the most complete automated and humane experience possible.