5 Minutes to Great Customer Service
This morning I got lost on the way to Westchester County Airport through the hills of Bedford. Never mind that I grew up there, I trusted my GPS more than my own common sense.
I ran to return the rental car full of gas (leaving my tempurpedic pillow again
in the driver seat as usual) and raced to the counter to grab my boarding pass as the printer was not working where I had stayed the night before.
Upon handing my drivers license to the woman lacking compassion at the counter at 25 minutes before my flight, I announce that I need a boarding pass for my flight.
“Woman lacking compassion” informs me that I have missed the 30 min cutoff for boarding passes. I thought she was kidding. Does Air Tran have any customer service I wonder?
Granted I made the mistake of saving some money on the flight to Baltimore by flying Air Tran which I will never do again. The people at the Delta counter just shook their heads, knowing full well that the woman could have helped me with no problem and no risk of losing her job.
I asked for her to call her supervisor. She did and the supervisor didn’t even have the decency to talk to me face to face also refusing to accommodate me with plenty of time and 200 steps to the gate and plane.
When do the rules become a deterrent to great or at this point even GOOD customer service, I wonder?
When was the last time you had a chance to bend your rules just a little bit to accommodate a customer when you had the chance?
Is it more important to follow the rules (which were imposed by this supervisor, not the airport itself to lose a customer for life?
Lesson for me as a very active traveler
1) Never assume you can print your boarding pass at the gate if you’re late
2) Air Tran has no interest helping a business traveler when they had the opportunity in person or the 4 phone calls I made to resolve the issue today.
Since the next flight for them was 12 hours later and they have no partner airlines - I ended up paying for a cab to Amtrak in Stamford, CT-and took the train to Baltimore, which was by the way half the price of the flight and even got me into Baltimore within 20 min of my original flight.
Lesson learned, take the train!