Abstract
Gautam Bhambri, a senior marketing executive in a well-known multinational corporation, and his colleague Ramesh Thakur were unfairly treated at the boarding gate of Bangalore-bound flight PC 81 operated by Airways India Limited (henceforth referred to as Airways) at 14:15 Hrs on 24 March 2017 at Delhi airport. When they protested and insisted on meeting the supervisory staff before boarding the flight, the gate manager, without informing them, off-loaded them from the flight and proceeded to complete the push back of the aircraft from the tarmac, instructing the security to close the gate behind him.
On realizing the gravity of the situation, the executives immediately went to the supervisory staff of Airways inside the airport, where they were treated callously and rudely. The executives had an important official assignment the next day in Bangalore; hence, they had to buy fresh tickets of another airline at a higher price than what they had paid for Airways. Finally, they reached their destination late in the night. In the meantime, the executives conjectured about the possible reasons for the misdemeanour of the entire Airways team at the airport. They arrived at the following three probable causes: (a) the airport team managed operations and worked with a large number of customers on a daily basis under considerable time pressure, (b) they had monotonous work, which over time could make the staff stressed and lose sight of customer care objectives and (c) lack of appropriate recruitment and training processes for the airport staff by Airways.
The total air passenger traffic in India stood at 106.45 million in the financial year 2015–2016 (April 2015–March 2016), which was an increase of 12.47 per cent from the previous year. Growth in passenger traffic had been strong since the beginning of the new millennium, especially with rising incomes and low-cost aviation. Normally, the formal customer complaint incidences were almost 19 in 10,000 passengers. Out of the complaints, 5–6 per cent were due to bad staff behaviour. 1 Airways, was a major full-service airline operating in India with over 20 per cent market share, which had declined by 2 per cent in the financial year 2015–2016. 2
Gautam decided to take some time to objectively analyse the situation before making a formal complaint about the wrongful act of the staff of Airways. He emailed his complaint to the ‘Guest Relations Team’ of the airline on 1 April 2017 (refer to Exhibit 1 for the copy of the email). Immediately he received a response from the ‘Guest Relations Team’ of Airways, acknowledging the complaint and assigning Ms Namita Rana as the contact person. The email also promised a response by 7 April 2017 (refer to Exhibit 2).
The promised response from Ms Rana did not happen by the stipulated time, and Gautam flagged the delay on 8 April 2017 through another email (refer to Exhibit 3). Against this mail he received an immediate response from Ms Rana, which informed that it would take Airways more time to respond and, significantly, gave no further deadline (refer to Exhibit 4).
Gautam waited till 26 April 2017 for a response from Airways. Since it was now almost four weeks from the time he had lodged the complaint, he sent a reminder mail to Ms Rana (refer to Exhibit 5) on the afternoon of 27 April 2017. Gautam finally received an email on 28 April 2017 from Ms Namita Rana which offered him a full refund for the fare which was initially paid to Airways (refer to Exhibit 6).
Gautam discussed the content of the letter and the compensation offered with Mr Thakur. Although the email from Namita did not explicitly mention, it was amply clear that they had internally adjudged that the operations team of Airways was definitely at fault; otherwise, a full refund would not have been offered.
Gautam was, however, now more concerned about the Guest Relations Team, which he felt was at an even greater fault than the airport operations team. Gautam reasoned that the Guest Relations Team of Airways knew that he was an Airways Loyalty card holder and would have spent more than ₹0.6 million on Airways tickets in the last three years. 3 Thus Airways knew that the airlines would have (very conservatively) accrued a gross margin of at least ₹0.12 million on account of Mr Gautam, in the last three years. Still they made a standard commercial offer which did not cover even the financial loss of the customer as the refund was clearly ₹1,732 less than the expenses incurred by the executive for the tickets of the alternate flight which they were forced to take. Apart from that, the agony of being treated shabbily by the staff and the loss of time and effort were neither acknowledged nor compensated. Also, the tone and tenor of the communication was not intended to appease an angry customer. The guest relations team that managed the contact centre had time to think and respond appropriately; hence, Gautam expected it to be more customer-centric than his experience so far. He felt cheated and did not feel like flying Airways again.
Gautam, being a marketing executive, was exploring the possible learning that could be derived from the entire experience. He felt that the experience highlighted many relevant issues of training customer-facing employees in operations and customer care. His experience also encouraged him to explore further the reasons for service failure and how to design and implement a suitable response which would lead to service recovery.
Finally, he had to decide whether to fly Airways at all in future or not. He wanted to give the airline one more chance to attempt a service recovery. So he decided to convey his dissatisfaction with the offer made by the Airways’ guest relations team and began drafting an appropriate reply.
From: Gautam Bhambri
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2017 4:39
To: Guest Relations
Cc: ‘Ramesh Thakur’
Subject: Customer Service Disaster at Airways
It was apparent that passengers with seat numbers 1 onwards were allowed by the Gate Manager without making any further announcement (beyond the last one which allowed boarding for seat number 15 onwards). This was a clear case of discrimination and may have even been a willful and deliberate act, intended at depriving us. Hence, I felt that this should be highlighted to the supervisors of Airways. So we sat down in the first chair in front of Gate Manager and asked the Gate Manager that we wanted to meet his supervisor.
The Gate Manager did not ask me about why I wanted to see the supervisor. After some time the Gate Manager told us “now that everyone has boarded, you should also board”. By that time he was on telephone call and we could overhear that he communicated to the other side that “four passengers are short and out of them two are in front of him”. The Gate manger then asked for our names and seat numbers, to which I respond that I want to talk to the supervisor. In the mean time two more passengers came and the Gate Manager told us that he would have to close the boarding. At no point of time, he shared that the supervisor was not going to come.
The Gate Manager then suddenly went off and asking the security to close the gate behind him. I was completely taken aback as an employee of a customer facing function can be so callous. The Gate Manager neither gave any warning to us that if we did not board the flight he would have no option but to leave us out of the flight, nor did he get his supervisor to meet us. I checked with the security in the gate, who told us that now the Gate manager would come only after push back of the flight. I asked the security; where the Airways supervisors were located physically, and he told that they were at Gate 37.
I ran to the Gate 37 and reached in breathless condition. The person on the desk of Gate 37 told me to calm down. I told him about what had happened and asked for the supervisor. The supervisor, who had “Duty Manager” tag on his crest, told that nothing could be done now, and just ignored us who were visibly distressed. The assistant to the duty manager told us that they had given us adequate warning and we had refused to board. To which I responded that it was factually incorrect. We had no intention of not boarding, as we were going for official work. I also asked why the supervisor could not attend to the customer’s wish to talk to supervisor, the assistant to the duty manager shared that there are many flights and they did not have time to attend to customers.
In the mean time when I and Mr. Thakur were taking stock of the bizarre situation and atrocious handling by the entire set of Airways staff, we noticed that the Duty Manager and his Assistant were walking out of the Gate 37 towards the exit of the airport. I asked in the counter about the way out? The staff at the counter informed that the passenger would have to go out of the airport and make their own arrangement thereafter. I wanted to know how to go out? The staff shared that the same team (the Duty Manager and their assistants) would have to help you get out. This was the worst handling of a passenger that I had experienced in my 24 years of experience of flying with any airline in India or abroad.
When I approached the team to take us out of the airport, the team was quite arrogant and took its own sweet time, which looked quite intentional to me and Mr. Thakur. Finally, the assistant to duty manager got us out, more or less as if doing a favor to us (whom they had treated unprofessionally and shabbily repeatedly).
I booked two tickets on the next available flight with a different airline to Bangalore at a total price of ₹21,332/- and came to Bangalore.
I tried to book the complaint in Airway’s website, but there was no response. Hence, I am sending the complaint on e-mail. I look forward to your considered and appropriate response so as to make good the financial loss, the anxiety and delay.
Regards,
Gautam Bhambri
Dear Mr. Bhambri,
This is with reference to your email below.
Vide our mail, we duly acknowledge its receipt and thank you for your time in writing to us and sharing your experience.
We assure you of giving it our complete attention to understand and redress your concerns.
Ms Namita Rana will be handling this communication registered under the Ref no: CUSTCOM/014116/3598578.
We will endeavor to revert to you latest by April 07, 2017.
May we solicit your patience and support to us till such time.
Sincerely,
Rajesh
Guest Relations
Airways (India) Ltd.
Mumbai, India.
Dear Rajesh,
The timeline communicated by Airways was “latest by 7th April”. I have not received any communication so far, hence bringing it to your notice.
Kindly note that I had not set the deadline, Airways guest relations team had set the same. Now you yourselves are not adhering to the same. I understand that a serious complaint like this would require escalation to higher management and that may take more time to respond, than initially estimated. However, in such case is it too much of a problem to communicate to the aggrieved passenger that you are unable to give you a response now and you shall take a bit longer.
Being a marketing professional, I am handling the problem patiently and it is a case study for me. It is interesting enough for classroom teaching. In fact if you read the original complaint, it is about serious lack of customer centricity as well as intent. The response of the guest relations team is more or less falling in the same pattern. I get a feeling that the organization is following only set standard processes, providing lip service and not really bothered about customer relationship and customer engagement.
Kindly communicate to me in case you need more time.
With warm regards,
Gautam Bhambri
Our Ref No: BOM/CC/AR/010416/3398678
08 April 2017
Mr. Gautam Bhambri
Dear Mr. Bhambri,
Warm Greetings!
Thank you for your e-mails dated April 1/8, 2017.
Our enquiry into the incident brought to our attention would take a while longer than anticipated. We will shortly get back to you with our findings.
Thank you once again for communicating with us.
Warm Regards,
Namita Rana
Guest Relations
Airways (I) Ltd.
Dear Namita,
I am not getting any response from you. Could you please respond?
Your handling of the complaint so far is definitely not satisfactory.
In case you can’t handle this case, kindly had it over to someone who is more responsive at least and hopefully more competent.
I am marking it to guest relations account also, just in case that helps.
Regards,
Gautam Bhambri
Our Ref No: CUSTCOM/014116/3598578
28 April 2017
Mr. Gautam Bhambri
Dear Mr. Bhambri,
Warm Greetings!
Thank you for your e-mail dated April 20th and of date. I regret the delay in writing to you.
We regret to note Mr. Ramesh Thakur and your experiences at the Boarding Gate at Delhi Airport, during intended travel on flight PC 81 of March 20, 2017 from Delhi to Bangalore.
Having enquired with our Delhi Airport Office we gather that in keeping with procedure, boarding staff had commenced sequential boarding of above flight. As you had come to the Boarding.
Gate first for boarding (seats 11A and 11B), you were requested to be seated for a while and wait for announcement for sequence numbers.
The boarding process was as follows:
Unaccompanied Minors, Wheelchair/medical cases Families with children, expectant mothers and guests requiring special assistance. Sequential boarding i.e. Guest from row 30 to 43, Guests from 22 to 43 and then all remaining guests. May I mention here that there is a separate line for Premiere and JP Platinum / JP Gold guests as they board anytime during the boarding process.
We understand that Mr. Thakur and yourself, sat near gate and did not wish to travel and wanted to speak with Duty Manager or with Supervisor (10 minutes prior to flight departure STD 1425 hours). As Mr. Thakur and you were the last 2 guests left for boarding.
Although staff at boarding gate had politely requested Mr. Ramesh Thakur and yourself to board the flight the flight, you had had refused to board. As the flight had to be released for departure, Mr. Ramesh Thakur and you were off-loaded from the flight.
My sincerest apologies if we have failed to fulfill the expected service levels on this occasion. Moving forward we have since updated remarks ‘FULL REFUND’ on unused tickets # 4891209868342 & 4891209868343. In keeping with terms and conditions of ticket issuance and fare rules, appropriate refund of above tickets would be required to be processed through the issuing agent. Kindly approach the Agent to initiate the refund process. Please note that airline is not responsible for any deduction done by the Travel Agent.
Thank you once again for sharing your experience and views with us. It is our pleasure and privilege welcoming you on board our flights and we look forward to Mr. Ramesh Thakur and your continued support of Airways.
Warm Regards,
Namita Rana
Guest Relations
Airways (I) Ltd.
Customer Service Failure at Airways (India) Limited (B)
On 28 April 2016, Gautam had received an e-mail from Namita Rana, from the Guest Relations Team of Airways India Limited (henceforth referred to as Airways). This e-mail offered him a full refund of the Delhi–Bangalore fare of the flight PC 81, on 24 March 2016, from which he and his colleague Ramesh Thakur were off-loaded. See Exhibit 1 for the communication made by Ms Namita Rana.
Gautam was not happy with the offer as the financial component did not cover the expense he had to incur to buy the alternate flight tickets in the last moment. Also, the agony of being treated shabbily by the Airways airport staff, the loss of time and effort was not compensated. So he conveyed his dissatisfaction with the compensation offered by the Airway’s guest relations team on 9 May 2016 (see Exhibit 2 for the details). There was no acknowledgement of this e-mail from the Airway’s Guest Relations Team and hence Gautam once again reminded the Guest Relations Team about the same, vide e-mail dated 13 May 2016 (see Exhibit 3).
Finally on 13 May, Airway’s team offered to credit 4,000 Air Miles to Gautam’s Airways Loyalty Membership Account (see Exhibit 4). Gautam checked the Airway’s loyalty point redemption chart and worked out that each Air mile was worth ₹0.4 on an average (considering a wide basket of redemption offers available). Hence the 4,000 Air Miles was almost worth ₹1,600, which was still slightly less than the direct financial loss incurred by him, even if he considered the redeemed value in cash (which was not the case).
By this time, Gautam had become very busy with his other assignments and had reached the conclusion that it was futile to prod the Airway’s team any further. So he accepted the offer of additional Air miles and tried to reply on a positive tone (see Exhibit 5). Namita also closed the conversation in her characteristic insensitive manner (see Exhibit 6).
Gautam pondered about the matter and realized that now he essentially had three options:
Forget the episode as an aberration. Hence, renew the relationship with Airway’s and continue as before.
Get the total Air miles accrued by him over the past three years redeemed and stop patronizing Airway’s in future.
Stop patronizing Airway’s immediately and let the Air miles lapse.
Gautam felt that there was a pattern in the entire experience with the Airway’s team, be it the airport staff or the Guest Relations Team. Both set of staff of Airways had essentially been trying to just do a job and somehow ensure that work does not stop. But the entire episode somehow did not leave a good aftertaste. Gautam wondered if Airways had offered the total compensation of refund and the additional Air miles as their first solution, would that have been a better handling of the situation? How much impact did the lack of timely response and non-acknowledgement of e-mails had on his experience as a customer of Airways?
Gautam being a marketing professional realized that the incident also raised a few fundamental questions like what should be the objective of Guest Relations team? Should it even try a service recovery in this case? On what basis, decisions regarding compensation could have been taken? If Gautam decided to stop patronizing Airway’s in future, would it have been better for Airways if he was not offered the full refund or the additional 4,000 Air Miles at all? Whether a telephone call from Airways to Gautam would have helped project Airways as a more customer-centric organization? On what basis the decision to call up Gautam, or not, could have been taken?
Our Ref No: CUSTCOM/014116/3598578
28 April 2016
Gautam Bhambri
Dear Mr. Bhambri,
Warm Greetings!
Thank you for your e-mail dated April 20th and of date. I regret the delay in writing to you.
We regret to note Mr. Ramesh Thakur and your experiences at the Boarding Gate at Delhi Airport, during intended travel on flight PC 81 of March 20, 2016 from Delhi to Bangalore.
Having enquired with our Delhi Airport Office we gather that in keeping with procedure, boarding staff had commenced sequential boarding of above flight. As you had come to the Boarding Gate first for boarding (seats 11A and 11B), you were requested to be seated for a while and wait for announcement for sequence numbers.
The boarding process was as follows:
Unaccompanied Minors, Wheelchair /medical cases Families with children, expectant mothers and guests requiring special assistance. Sequential boarding i.e. Guest from row 30 to 43, Guests from 22 to 43 and then all remaining guests. May I mention here that there is a separate line for Premiere and JP Platinum/JP Gold guests as they board anytime during the boarding process.
We understand that Mr. Thakur and yourself, sat near gate and did not wish to travel and wanted to speak with Duty Manger or with Supervisor (10 minutes prior to flight departure STD 1425 hours). As Mr. Thakur and you were the last 2 guests left for boarding.
Although staff at boarding gate had politely requested Mr. Ramesh Thakur and yourself to board the flight, you had had refused to board. As the flight had to be released for departure, Mr. Ramesh Thakur and you were off-loaded from the flight.
My sincerest apologies if we have failed to fulfill the expected service levels on this occasion.
Moving forward we have since updated remarks ‘FULL REFUND’ on unused tickets # 4891209868342 & 4891209868343. In keeping with terms and conditions of ticket issuance and fare rules, appropriate refund of above tickets would be required to be processed through the issuing agent. Kindly approach the Agent to initiate the refund process. Please note that airline is not responsible for any deduction done by the Travel Agent.
Thank you once again for sharing your experience and views with us. It is our pleasure and privilege welcoming you on board our flights and we look forward to Mr. Ramesh Thakur and your continued support of Airways.
Warm Regards,
Namita Rana
Guest Relations
Airways (I) Ltd.
Dear Madam,
I was out of office for a long time and could not respond to you earlier. Thanks for coordinating the matter with the appropriate authorities in Airways and communicating me about the full refund. I have asked my travel agent for processing the refund claim.
Your response, albeit quite delayed shows that the company is at least ready to consider the customer’s legitimate grievance, which is a big positive and possibly a good first step. However, I find a few weaknesses in the customer care process and I am highlighting this as the solution provided by you is not satisfactory at all and if I may suggest, not well thought through. I need to justify the claim and hence I am providing the following perspective:-
I guess you are refunding the amount because you want to address the customer’s grievance and expect to retain the customer. Ideal situation would be that the customer gets back to the earlier relationship status with Airways. However, still the customer is on the negative as he had spent ₹21332/- (and the trouble of waiting in the airport for more than three hours and some incidental expenses on refreshments), while your reimbursement is to the tune of ₹19600/- only. So the customer is not happy (and legitimately so), while you have shelled out 19,600/-. I guess it is a classic lose-lose option for both the parties involved.
Kindly note that the customer has more than 24,000 Air miles. Assuming it is a 4% accrual loyalty miles, the customer would have spent more than INR 6,00,000/- on tickets in the last 3 years. Assuming the gross margin in the business to be conservatively 20% (actually it could be much more), there is enough surplus that you have accrued on account of this customer. In case you consider the customer lifetime value, there small be a potential of earning considerably from this customer in the near future (much more than the amount in question), which you have not possibly considered.
When you are anyway giving the full refund, using the set of paragraphs starting “The boarding process was as follows:” and ending with “As the flight had to be released for departure, Mr. Ramesh Thakur and you were off-loaded from the flight” is actually redundant.
Also, this being a complaint from a loyalty card holder, and the customers had clearly identified them, it might not have been out of place to even call up the customer and talk. I think I had not given any indication of being an unreasonable customer, also the profile of the customer would have helped you come to that conclusion. In future you may consider this option.
I now look forward to a partial service recovery effort to be converted to a full customer recovery case. Kindly communicate to me what is the service recovery offer that you plan now.
As I had indicated to you earlier, these email communication between a Airways customer and Airways is a classic customer care and grievance management case. This can be taught in the “Service Marketing” domain in many academic institutions across the globe. I have already found out that this being an authentic and formal communication between a company and a customer, it can be published as it is, without any approval from the organization. I am sharing this with you because, I plan to publish the same for academic knowledge creation and dissemination, hopefully in a popular and reputed management case clearing house.
I request you to respond in such a manner that Airways comes across as a customer centric organization, which is ready to take care of its customers.
Thanking you,
Gautam Bhambri
Dear Namita,
So far I had been getting an acknowledgement of my communication. However, this time I have not got any communication so far. I hope that the mail has reached you and you are working on it.
I am marking a copy to guest relations to keep them posted about this complaint of mine, which I do not think has been addressed properly (as the trailing mail would suggest).
I look forward to a communication from the appropriate authority in Airways. Kindly acknowledged receipt.
With warm regards,
Gautam Bhambri
Our Ref No: CUSTCOM/014116/3598578
13 May 2016
Gautam Bhambri
Dear Mr. Bhambri,
Warm Greetings!
Thank you for your e-mail dated May 9, 2016 and of date. I am sorry that you are still unhappy with our response of concerns you raised.
Mr. Bhambri, I regret, if the explanation contained in my e-mail dated April 28, 2016 was at variance with your perception or assessment of the reported incident in connection with your intended travel on flight PC 81 of March 20, 2016 from Delhi to Bangalore. I can assure you, however, that my explanation was not intended to dispute your version of the incident but was merely meant to share with you the feedback that we received from our Delhi Airport Office, based on our enquiries.
Whilst I understand your disappointment at the development, I trust you will appreciate that it is difficult to accept guests after the Boarding Gate has been closed in keeping with the scheduled time lines. Had it been possible our staff would have certainly accepted you for above travel.
Moving forward, as we value your goodwill and custom, I will be pleased to credit 4000 Air Miles to your Airways Loyalty Membership Account # 301595689. We await your concurrence to credit Air Miles to your Membership Account.
Thank you you once again for your feedback and we look forward to welcoming you on board one of our flights in the future.
Warm regards,
Namita Rana
Guest Relations
Airways (I) Ltd
Dear Madam,
If this is the best you can do, then so be it. It required quite a bit of prodding to get Airways to respond and irrespective of whether I am happy, I do not have any more time to pursue it any further. Please credit the 4000 Air miles on my account.
I shall be happy in case you can give me the following two pieces of information:
1. Detailed Air mile account for account number 301595689.
2. What is the redemption possible with these Air Miles.
Regards,
Gautam Bhambri
Our Ref No: CUSTCOM/014116/3598578
26 May 2016
Gautam Bhambri
Dear Mr. Bhambri,
Warm Greetings!
Thank you for your e-mail dated May 24, 2016 and for accepting our goodwill offer to credit 4000 Air Miles to your Membership Account # 301595689. I have sent suitable instructions to do the needful.
Mr. Bhambri, should you require any assistance with regard to redemption of the reward Miles, our dedicated Airways Guest service executives will be pleased to assist you at telephone numbers, as updated on our website
We assure you once again of our best attention and look forward to welcoming you on board Airways soon.
Warm Regards,
Namita Rana
Guest Relations
Airways (I) Ltd