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.

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