by In this week’s article I want to share an experience I had this week with Qantas at the Perth airport. Driving to the airport I remembered I had read on Facebook (I think, but don’t quote me) that Qantas are now weighing all passenger’s carry-on luggage for extra weight. I hadn’t experienced this in Melbourne when I flew over, so I didn’t give it much thought, my carry-on luggage was the same as it always was and I had never had an issue until I approached security and sure enough, there they were weighing people’s carryon luggage.
When it was my turn, they weighed both of my bags and sure enough, I was over by about 1.5 kilos. I explained that I was flying business class for work, that I am a Platinum One member, and you know, there was absolutely no leeway. There was no flexibility at all. It didn’t matter what I said.
I then had to go to check in to put my bag in, feeling quite frustrated. The guy on the desk only added to my frustration. When I talked about he just said it was the rules and it’s for your safety’. I then told him I fly all over the world. I see people put their frigging house on the plane, if it was because of safety issues, every plane in America would have crashed. People take multiple suitcases, backpacks, shopping bags etc., etc. It’s ridiculous, how’s it a safety issue?
So anyway, this guy stood his ground, it wasn’t an argument, but I was left feeling quite patronized.
And then I said to him, can I just offer you a suggestion? All you needed to say was something like, “I understand it’s really frustrating” when I was really frustrated and, being cheeky back at you. Just having you acknowledge how I am feeling would have made all the difference and deescalated the situation. He stopped and looked at me and said “You are right that would have been a much better thing to say”
I then headed through security had a chat again to the two people who are stopping customers to weigh their bags, told them about my conversation with the guy on the check-in. They said to me how they hate having to do this and customers are unhappy about it especially when like me they are only a kilo over.
The staff in the lounge were really good when I shared my experience they immediately apologized and said “We’re so sorry, and understand why you would be really annoyed” and to top it off, and what made the experience even worse, was my flight was delayed by 3 hours and when discussing this with staff in the lounge, I found out a previous flight was delayed as well, and that I could have got that flight had I not had to check my bag in!!
The end result was that I missed my connecting flight from Melbourne to Hobart, and instead I had to stay in a hotel overnight and didn’t arrive home until mid-morning the following day.
Thinking it through, I was left wondering what has Qantas done to help these people in these roles? Clearly, there were a lot of disgruntled Qantas passengers in the lounge and walking around the airport.
Have they been trained in how to deal with customers who are unhappy?
I’m quite certain that the guy I dealt with wasn’t enjoying his role and I’m sure those people would get pretty worn out by the end of the day. Dealing with a constant stream of passengers who are grumbling, and letting them know how unhappy they are to be treated in this way.
What situations are you putting your people in? Will they succeed or will they fail?
My point is, it’s important to take the time to think about the impact on your people. If you’re putting people in a position where they might have to deal with difficult customers or challenging customer behavior, you need to set them up to succeed. And that needs to be done on a frequency.
There’s no point saying, we trained them ages ago or we’ve trained them in the past. This maybe the case, however if they are not dealing with certain situations on a daily basis, how do you know they remember the training? You need to prompt the training frequently. It’s about reminding them that they have the knowledge and the skills to deal with these situations and most importantly, there is a service standard in place to follow.
Training That Changes Behaviour Back On The Job
I discussed training people someone how to handle a robbery. One of the biggest challenges when training something like a robbery, is that may or may not happen and therefore doing behavioral based training is not going to be good enough.
Job aids reminds them of the process, but also taking the time to frequently remind them in a setup meeting, it’s a simple question – if there is a robbery today, what would you do?
People need to know these procedures off by heart. But the only way they can keep them top of mind, is to keep maintain a frequency of checking in. At the very least, they must remember where to find job ad that describes the rest of the process.
It’s very expensive, taking people off the job to train. Sometimes, it isn’t even the best way.
I actually felt sorry for the staff, they were put into a situation where I don’t think their technique was correct. The response of “It’s the rules” was clearly a justification and the golden rule of handing customer complaints is don’t justify. Show that you understand and acknowledge the feeling, which by the way the pilot did really well when he said, “I’m so sorry, I know that this delay is going to really impact many of you. And I know you just want to get to your destination and do what you want to do. So, on behalf of Qantas, I’m really sorry.
Need more information to answer these questions? Have a look through my previous Blogs, located on The Loyalty Zone website or contact me, I look forward to hearing from you.
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Warm regards,
Craig