What’s Your Customer’s Time Worth?
Wasting My Time
Last weekend I had the pleasure of traveling to the San Francisco area to work with a few clients. I absolutely love that part of the country, but getting there and back from Chicago is a real pain. Very few carriers seem to offer direct flights, so I always seem to get stuck in LA or San Diego with a layover. This time, I flew Frontier Airlines, so I had to pass through Denver. We had 30-40 minute delays going both ways, which no one bothered to explain or justify.
Ordinarily getting by with just a 40 minute delay would be a blessing. Not so when you only have 30 minutes to make a connecting flight. The connecting flight, of course, left on time. Without me. So I found myself at the Denver airport at 9:30 Friday night not sure how I’d be getting home. I was also scheduled to leave for vacation at 8:00 the next morning. From Chicago.
After confirming that I had missed my connection, the gate rep referred me to the Frontier customer service counter, which had a line of 20 other angry looking travelers waiting in front of me. I decided to try to book another flight through their 800 number while I was waiting in line. Fifteen minutes later I spoke with a rep on the phone who informed me that rescheduling a missed flight (regardless of fault) by phone carried a $100 surcharge. I promptly hung up on her and decided to wait it out in line.
Making Up for the Inconvenience
Frontier knew they had screwed up and had seriously inconvenienced those of us trying to make tight connecting flights. They probably also knew that first-time Frontier flyers (like myself) may be inclined to fly with another company in the future.
so what does Frontier think its customers’ time is worth?
- A free hotel room for the night at the Crystal Inn (one of the nicer hotels I’ve stayed in - I kept the Bath & Body Works soaps and shampoos…)
- A $9 meal voucher for dinner that night
- A $5 meal voucher for breakfast in the morning
- A $150 flight voucher to be used toward future flights
- A sincere apology from the service rep who booked my 6:00 flight to Chicago the next morning
Was I still mad? Sure. It set my vacation back by about four hours, I was only able to get 3 hours of sleep that night, and I was cranky as hell all day. But will I fly Frontier again? Yes. Once more at least, since I’ve got a $150 voucher to use. But if they screw me over on the next trip, that’s it for me.
A Lesson in All This
Airlines are particularly good at calculating the value of customers’ time. The 25 minute delay of that flight cost them over $200 for each customer that missed a connecting flight - and there were dozens of us. They could have simply said “sorry about that” and sent us on our way, but the effects of that approach would have cost them far more than $200 per person in the long run (see my post on customer lifetime value). They’d rather pay to make it up to you and hope you come back and have a better experience next time.
This is a lesson airlines have learned better than many other businesses: if you inconvenience your customer or your product or service doesn’t meet their expectations, you’d better find a way to make it up to them. How you do that depends on how badly you screwed up and how much you value your client’s business. At the very least, you have to set things right and fix whatever went wrong. And for god’s sake, apologize, and mean it! If that’s still not enough, offer a free product or service upgrade that will convince your customer that you’re worth continuing to do business with after all.
It’s a whole lot cheaper to keep an existing customer (even a disgruntled one) than it is to find a new one. Keep yours happy.
What an inspiration! Go Kyle Go! Buckets and buckets of blessings on your...
United pulled one on me that is unforgivable. I was flying from Chicago to Toronto, got to the airport 2 hours early. Huge line, moving slowly. Started to get worried, I asked a United employee if I would still have time to get through the line in time (I was about half way closer than when I started in just over an hour). She said, “sure, don’t worry about it”. Well, 35 minutes later I was at the front of the line, 20 minutes before the scheduled departure time. They called me up and then promptly told me that there was no way my luggage would make the plane, that I should get to the airport earlier in the future. They could get me on the next flight, 4 hours later. I was a keynote speaker at a conference that afternoon and it was going to get me there too late. Tough luck, they were rude and blamed me when I had given them a full 2 hours and even asked an employee if I would be OK time wise.
I have been screwed by United so many times and this was the final nail in the coffin. This is going to cost them, I avoid United at all costs and urge others to do the same. Don’t tick someone off to the point where they do to you what I want to do to United. Fly Southwest, they aren’t perfect but they do truly care and at least try to serve their customers.
August 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I’ve had my share of troubles with United too. And similar issues with American. It only seems to be getting worse too, with rising fuel prices. Now some airlines are charging for things that have always been free. Frontier is charging $3-5 for snacks now, and I even heard that one airline is charging $8 for a pillow and blanket for the flight. I wonder if they’re keeping those flights colder to increase sales…
August 27th, 2008 at 4:14 pm