Chicken or Beef?

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!

1. by Mike Stubler

   On June 12, 2009 at 12:10 am

   I have generally been positively surprised by Continental so that is my guess.

   You are no doubt in the top 1% of people qualified to comment on service in the airline industry. I would not wish your travel schedule on anyone

2. by omer

   On June 12, 2009 at 12:14 am

   Lufthansa…
   Virgin in essence is in the airline business since it recognized it as an under-serviced (used to be under-serviced, now not serviced…) consumer facing industry – that can benefit from havinga company looking at things differently.

3. by Sandy Gorman

   On June 26, 2009 at 9:24 pm

   I have always been a Southwest fan, but some of the big baddies seem to be trying to improve in some ways (although food, blankets, or pillows are no longer a part of their new and improved customer service!). And I’ve noticed on more and more airlines that there are no longer movies … what is there to do once the laptop battery dies?

   I did have a great middle seat experience. I had 11B and the son of a family boarding ahead of me had 11A. Grandma and momma were somewhere further back in the plane. I offered up my seat to one of them and found myself in a window seat amongst their extended family of 60 people flying from San Francisco through the same connection in Atlanta and on to Florida for the traditional three days of celebration and partying for the wedding of one of the sons. They were in great spirits and so appreciative that they fed me, bought me cocktails, offered to do the henna painting on my hands, and renamed me Sandy Patel!

   

3 Responses to “Chicken or Beef?”