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.

Preventing planes from going missing ever again

The search for the missing Malaysian airlines plane is still ongoing several days after the plane disappeared from radar view. Could such a difficulty be avoided in the future? Various aviation experts have their own theories as to what has happened to the plane and what can be done to prevent such an anomaly from occurring again. Now the question is "can the issue of not being able to locate a plane be avoided in the future by using commercially available technologies today?". The answer is YES, with mobile devices.

As you know most Smart phones or devices are GPS enabled and such GPS coordinate or location can be made available by the device, for example to Google if it has Google service installed or to any other application that ask for location. If all airlines follow the example of Qatar Air on their 787 fleet where mobile services and WiFi services are available then it would have been easy to find the last known location of the plane even if it went out of radar range. But How?

Let's follow the thought of an individual who would board a plane with mobile service or WiFi service enabled. The person will then turn on his mobile device  on board, connect to the internet, use social media telling his friends how cool it is to be able to do that while in  flight. He might even send and SMS  or make phone call. All those activities can be location tagged, either stored on the phone or sent to a server somewhere depending on which application runs on the phone…

If such device for example has a customer experience agent such as Geoptima then the last known location of that device will always be available. Of course with just one device active or connected it is still an inaccurate location, but imagine what if all passengers use their devices… we can then look into history which of those device has last sent a location and where, in that case it would have been possible to know where the missing plane is and not spend millions of dollars and countless man hours in searching for its whereabouts.

If only we can contribute on our own little way to the world then at least we can help people and save tax payer's money…. To do that we will have to convince mobile operators first on its value but perhaps it is possible to provide such capabilities directly to consumers for free as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility program….

I am in Egypt, and I was hoping that the country has changed after several changes in its leadership. But sadly it has gotten worse. On my way to check-in for my flight I was met by a greeter asking to help... so I played along, I noticed he knew all the security guys in the airport, so every security check point he asked me to give money to the security guy (well I think he pocketed most himself). So I passed 2 security checks without being checked, not even going through the Xray machines... This is so rampant that anyone can smuggle anything outside the country without being checked for just 10 US$... Just imagine you can make a plane disappear for only 10$....