Size does NOT matter

It is not often I get amazed about a company's customer service, but the following experience is just excellent.

In January 2006 I ordered a return ticket from London to Oslo with Norwegian, an alternative to the SASBraathens monopoly in Norway, for a trip in May 2006. Norwegian is a relatively new contender in the market and have some good ticket prices if you take the effort to order your tickets in advance. I got my return ticket for about £ 70 and was looking forward for my trip to Norway. Remember, I ordered my tickets 4 months in advance.

Re-scheduling of my outbound flight

After about 4-5 weeks after I ordered my tickets, I received an email stating that my outbound flight was cancelled and I was rebooked to a flight that was departuring one hour earlier that morning. I also received a new boarding pass by email.
No problem, I updated my schedule and forgot about the issue.

On May 15., the day before my travel, I receive a phone call from Norwegian, reminding me that my flight the following day was changed from my original booking. Excellent! I actually had forget about the flight change and the chances that I would have arrived too late at the airport was pretty reliable.

Those of you who travel regularly, know that what I just experienced from Norwegian is a service that hardly no airline practices. So why bother the call center with these "reminder" calls to its customers – especially since they are a cheap airline, where no-one expect this kind of customer service?

Achieving excellent customer support

I tend to believe that companies with a minimum dignity for its customers, will constantly satisfy as many customers as possible. It seems that the airline industry is now facing a new set of contenders that are building their business on cheap airline tickets, high level of customer service and keeping customer expectations at a minimum – enabling these new airlines to positively impress their customers with a standard level of customer service.

In 1999 I wrote a thesis for Scandianvian Airlines about building customer relationships on the Internet. Well, now 7 years later, it is pretty obvious that Scandinavian Airlines has failed addressing customer relationships on this channel. The company has in years received excellence awards for their frequent flying program and their innovation with WLAN inside their long haul flights, but expanding their customer experience outside the physical airplane is a total disaster. Not to mention the conflicts between pilots,fligh crew and executive management, that often results in strikes and parked airplanes.

The German alternative, Air Berlin, is an excellent example of new contenders entering the market and picking up the competition with the big net-airlines, such as: Lufthansa, British Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, Air France, KLM and Swiss. Air Berlin is not only growing its destinations and airplanes, but as recently launched their own frequent flyer program. Everytime I read about this company in the press, they are achieving glory. When I read about BA, SAS or Lufthansa, it is usually about a negative experience somehow.

Size does NOT matter

It makes me a happy fellow to see that the new contenders in the airline industry just eat market share from the large net-airlines, without them being able to properly respond. For way too long has this industry been misused by large airlines not being able to deliver the products they promised to way overprised tickets.

The great thing is that many of todays cheap airlines are delivering service that net-airlines are not capable of delivering. One example is when Norwegain called me to remind me that my flight the following day was changed from my original booking. If these airlines can keep up this mindset, they will not just establish long lasting customer relationships, but gain more and more customers.

An interesting thing, is when I spoke to a manager at SASBraathens two years ago, he did not even identify Norwegian as a competitor, cause they had too few airplanes and could not compete on the desired time slots…. Now 2 years later, Norwegian has as many airplanes and Braathens had when they where operating alone. And, these cheap airlines are just growing, Ryanair, Easyjet and FlyBe just acquired more airplanes and are hiring more pilots and crew.
People, this industry will look very different in just some years from now. Have a good flight.

The Da Vinci Code Quest is on

The Da Vinci Code Quest is flushing over us

Probably the one of the greatest hypes in the millennium so far. This time it is not the book, but the movie that is in focus. The difference is that this time we all know the story, because we all have rad the book.

A brilliant move by Columbia Pictures to head the market together with Google in an excellent way to explore users curiosity and create the "Da Vinci Code Quest". The Da Vinci Code Quest is an interactive adventure game, where users are to explore riddles and solve puzzles in the days before the movie is released.

Only Google registered users are able to participate the quest and solve the adventure. If there are some users out there that are not registered Google users, they will for sure acquire several on this quest. The questions that follows the next weeks for the people who are participating in the quest, must use and navigate through the different Google services on order to solve the quest.

Enabling users to learn you products and services the way the Da Vinci Code Quest is build, is a very powerful way to get build customer awareness and over a longer time-frame, switching costs. On the Da Vinci Code Quest, users must use and navigate between Google searches, Google Video, Googe Maps and Google blogs. By the way, since I am mentioning blogs, just 4 days after the Da Vinci Code Quest is launched, there are already almost 10.000 blogs (including this one) about the subject.

The Da Vinci Code Quest is an excellent example on how marketers who understand the product they are marketing, the customers they market to and the channels that carries the messages.

If you have not tried the Quest, I strongly recommend it! You can get started here!