Little things count
I recently won free airfare anywhere in the world on British Airways. They flew me to London, were I whooped it up with a bunch of other entrepreneurs, and then I flew off to Spain for a week of monkey business.
Here’s what British Airways gave us, all in all:
- 1 free airline ticket anywhere in the world (on a chartered 747 filled with biz owners)
- 1 free night at a hotel
- 2 free train tickets to London
- 7 free meals
- 3 free parties with open bars and brilliant minds
- plus an open bar on the plane
British Airways went to great expense putting on this huge event. I am thankful to have had such a great opportunity (though I’m sure they will leverage it 10 times over for the PR).
However, I just can’t get past the one very small thing about the trip. It was that goddamn metal box they kept asking me to put my luggage in to see if it would really “fit” in the overhead bin.
Grrr! I know the luggage fits in the bin. I’m a road warrior. I bought that specific piece of luggage because it would fit in the bin. It meets the regulations. And it fit the last 30 times I’ve flown. It fits.
So why did this airline keep asking me to fit it into a metal cage half the size of the bin before they’d let me on their airplane? Really — were they just trying to piss me off?
Now there is a good reason why I carry on. It’s that I don’t trust any airline with my baggage. I’ve heard the horror stories (yes, there are airplane hangers filled with people’s lost luggage).
So you can imagine how I felt when, during boarding, British Airways’ pain-in-the-ass attendant snatched away my bag just meters from the airplane door. When we landed, I had to wait for the luggage to be unloaded to the carousel. And this was not just the normal way-too-long wait, either. I had to wait for them to unfreeze a door somewhere that had frozen shut. In sum, it took almost a hour to retrieve my “stolen” luggage.
The moral of this story? The big, positive things you do for a customer can go out the window after one bad experience. Mind the little things with your customers and the big things will often take care of themselves.
Loading...