Airmiles and Customer Service

I think we're all used to utterly rubbish customer service from airlines, especially if you have to fly in economy class. No food, no drink, Byzantine terms and conditions, cancellations and subsequent rebookings that cost money (!!!), cramped seating and paying for Wifi on board without refunds if it doesn't work. Oh and good luck if you want to speak to a human, either on the phone or at the airport

Some airlines still have a concept of customer service - SAS and Lufthansa as well as low cost challenger Norwegian at least treat passengers (sorry customers) with some degree of dignity.

I stopped flying Finnair years ago and switched my allegiance to Lufthansa and Norwegian, primary on price. When Norwegian want 600eur to fly a family to Gatwick from Helsinki while Finnair wanted over 2500eur (on a BA flight too!) with effectively the same ticketing terms and conditions. For long haul Lufthansa is my preferred airline - they serve wine and beer with the meal (all included in the price) and have the most professional and hard working cabin crew I've so far come across.

While none of the above are perfect - they could do a HUGE amount more to make the economy experience better - more on that another time.

But what really gets me is that if times are economically tough for airlines, how little they do to actually understand their customer. I mean I used to fly Finnair religiously - their customer service was excellent, food and drink on board, clean aircraft and you could change flights without being punished. Let's be honest here, Finnair were excellent, really, really excellent! I used to change whole itineraries to fly Finnair....

If you want customers then shouldn't you understand why customers aren't flying with you. Isn't this the whole point of customer loyalty programmes?

Below is my Finnair Plus statement - it's been that way for years and not once have I ever been asked why...

So privacy, security and other aspects aside, if you have a customer loyalty card of any sort and change your behaviour, eg: by stopping using that company's services and they never query why, then you were probably never getting any service anyway...

I used to have quite a tally of Finnair points, they all expired or were changed to some newer, more customer friendly scheme, for the benefits of the customer. I was never informed why or when, nor did anyone ever contact me about the change. For a customer loyalty programme you've got to admit that's pretty dire.

Forbes has quite a bit to say about this...

So, if you happen to work in the customer service dept of an airline and wish to discuss the above and how you can win me back as a customer, and a loyal one at that, let me know...