Chicken or Beef 2: …and the answer is…

July 1, 2009 by Yuval Brisker

Here  the moment you have all been waiting for…:

Did you guess?

Continental is the airline I fly most, being that they are the hub airline in two of the places that I live – New York (at Newark) and Cleveland. And maybe familiarity breeds contempt… but what can I say?…I have come to call that airline between you and me…

The Borg’!!!
Yes. The Borg. Efficient, mechanical but soulless. Especially the customer service and the attitude of Continental’s onboard staff.  I know this is a terrible indictment, and probably a superficial generalization but believe me, this is not an anecdotal observation. In flight after flight after flight, I have seen a consistent deterioration of the quality of what they serve (coach is my measure — not business or BusinessFirst)  and how they serve it.

For example, they used to carry a great Asian Vegetarian meal, that I ordered even when I wasn’t. Two months ago, I ordered one, and they rudely told me that not only was it gone… but they never had one!!!! And despite my protestations, a flight attendant told me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. So now they replaced that great vegetarian meal with a shameful veggie burger in box, not only reducing the meal size and type but also ridding it of any amenities that their meal on the tray used to have (desert, salad, as weak as they were, they were there…). So those ordering vegetarian are left with a box for dinner while everyone else has a tray, reduced to second class citizens.

Second big issue is what I would call: “The SMILE”…

Or lack of it.

How hard is it to tell your staff to be sunny and nice and SMILE. Make it a rule. Southwest did. And what a difference it is to get on a Southwest plane. You KNOW people are going to be nice to you. You KNOW that’s part of that company’s culture.

Contrast that with the cold, robotic attitude and frowning faces I see on almost every Continental flight, as the attendants unhappily unload the meals with disdain on to passenger’s tables – with not even a minimal attempt to be nice. It seems people are just not happy to work there…

The Borg!

And so… Lufthansa wins The Golden Chicken – my Best Customer Experience of the Week Award , this week. Why?
Because to paraphrase an old musical I love…the planes were beautiful, the people were beautiful, the service was beautiful… Really!

And I thought this German animal was cold! WRONG!

The attendants went out of their way to be gently smiling and thoughtful. They remembered every request, went out of their way to do something extra and the atmosphere was just perfect. German engineering done right.
For example, I ordered an Asian Vegetarian….yes Lufthansa still carries it!!! And they came and asked me if I did in fact order it. Just making sure that I knew it was on its way. Then when I saw that it didn’t have a salad, I asked for one and the attendant didn’t frown or forget…she said “I will bring you a whole extra tray with a salad and desert” and she said it with The SMILE.

How much did that cost Lufthansa? The proper meal not that much, the extra tray, not that much, the SMILE -nothing. The result-I will certainly look to spend my next $1000 expenditure on a flight to Europe and beyond here, not with The Borg,

And all it took was a smile.

Arhaus

June 26, 2009 by Yuval Brisker

Arhaus has a special place in our hearts. John Roddy got it fast, recognized us early, gave us a huge chance, pushed the envelope of what our solution could do. John has always thought outside the box and recognized talent and value for what it is. John has really used TOA’s system more completely than any customer I can think of… and it’s all about customer service.  and has kept innovating and thinking all the way.

John and Arhaus are all about the customer – it is first, second and last on their minds – in fact John says in this article about his use of TOA: “the delivery and scheduling side of the operation are highly ranked among customers. Customer approval hovers at 98 percent, whereas in the past, the rating topped out at 85 percent. We’re white glove service …We fluff pillows, remove trash…and we’re clean shaven. We do it all. We run a tight ship here.”

That’s what every customer focused business should be about.

Service Innovation: The Next Big Thing

June 19, 2009 by Yuval Brisker

Last week I spoke to Chris Bucholz from InsideCRM about what I call “Service Innovation”. Chris wrote a great article as a result of that interview and you can read it here.

I have been thinking about this a lot: Most companies focus much of their creativity on the products they sell, not the service they provide.

This means that 90% of the innovation in the world is product innovation. This makes sense, right?  After all, without great innovative products that people can buy…in most cases…who needs service…?

But long term very few companies can provide a sustainably great product without great service and it doesn’t matter whether you are Dell or Apple or Cisco or Delta Airlines or GE. The fact of the matter is that you need to interact with the customers long after they bought your product in order to make them truly happy, to keep them loyal and positive, to keep them coming back.

And this is where most companies get it wrong and why I believe that there is a great untapped opportunity here and that the next big wave of innovation could easily be Service Innovation…

Imagine if companies like Apple focused an equal part of their brain power on innovating their service, not just their iPhones.  The result could be an iPhone grade revolution in customer service!

Wouldn’t that be interesting? Wouldn’t that be nice?

Chicken or Beef?

June 11, 2009 by Yuval Brisker

The companies that I personally am most exposed to in the realm of customer service are the airlines.  My job puts me in an airplane seat almost every week and on most weeks 2 or 3 times a week.

Despite the ubiquity of travel people are still fascinated by it (something I find quite fascinating in and of itself…). Even the people who do it all the time love to talk and think about travel. In fact, it never ceases to amaze me how many people I know can spend hours talking about the most mundane minutiae of their trips. Somehow it ties right into something very basic in human experience – the wanderer fantasy – and never stops fascinating. Doesn’t matter how much time you actually spend on the road.

And me, with my special sensitivity to customer service, I have the privilege of being even more aware of the details of the airlines’ massive customer service machines.  I have, thus, come to both admire them AND see them as a metaphors for everything that’s good and everything that’s bad about operations and/vs. customer service today.

So today I am launching a bi-monthly column I will call “Chicken or Beef” (the boring choices of entrees most airlines used to give you when you flew… but now only sometimes offer on long-haul flights).

Through this column,  I will be sharing my pleasures and my pains; the good the bad and the ugly experiences that I have on the phone, on the internet, at the boarding gate and mostly – in the air, with a view towards the greater customer experience (r)evolution.

Last week I had two radically different experiences on two radically different airlines plus one perception change. Tuesday night I flew Continental to Berlin. Thursday night I flew Lufthansa to Tel Aviv. Both were overnight flights. Which airline had the best service? Tune in next posting to find out….

p.s. I want to acknowledge a little bit of  inspiration from the Wall Street Journal column ‘The Middle Seat”.  Thanks!