They Got Us Coming And Going

We didn't have to spend another night in the Denver International Airport, but our bags haven't made it to San Diego, yet.

As it happened, more than a dozen passengers on our flight from Denver were deposited here in San Diego without luggage.

Clearly, the baggage handling system in Denver is broken.

To be fair, I should probably not blame the baggage handling system in Denver, I should blame the airline: most likely, they failed to load our bags on the flight out of Casper because of the weight limitations of the turboprop we flew to Denver, opting instead to put them on the next flight. That flight arrived in Denver after our San Diego flight departed, so our luggage was left stranded until at least this morning.

The thing is, the flight out of Casper was a) not full and b) two hours late because of mechanical problems.

And that, gentle reader, points to incompetence.

Standing by the baggage claim turnstile last night, watching the dwindling and slowly circling collection of not-our-bags, I thought about how little tolerance I have for incompetence.

If I go into a restaurant that is uncrowded and still boasts of slow service, I'd rather leave and go stand in line or sit at a table in a busy-but-efficient place than wait for Chatty Cathy to finish flirting with her manager. Drivers who hold up traffic because they can't simultaneously make a directional decision and talk on their cell phone should consider themselves fortunate that their metal box insulates them from the invective I'd offer them if I thought it would make a difference. I'm too polite to shove past people who block an aisle or path instead of moving out of the way while they fumble with their belongings, but the day when I'm not that polite is coming.

These days, the most polite response one can expect when telling a retail clerk or service representative of a problem is a shrug: not my problem, they say.

Now that automated customer service is so prevalent, they're probably right, and there is often no one there who can offer a solution. For example, when I call my parents, the phone company in Casper will often route my phone call to a recording that says, "You have reached 307-XXX-XXXX. We can't come to the phone right now. Goodbye!" While my parents sat by the phone on Christmas Eve, waiting for updates from the girls and me, all I got was that stupid recording. They could call out to me, however. Last night, I got the same message when I called to let them know we'd arrived safely, and when I called Operator Assistance to see if we could break through, I got no answer. From AT&T. I did get a recording which said that if I stayed on the line, an operator would assist me. I stayed on the line and let it ring for more than five minutes, and got no one.

As it happened, I had nothing better to do...we were standing in line waiting for a taxi. The girl managing the airport cab stand understood customer service, and in between calls for more cabs, she'd walk the length of the line and apologize for the delay, saying that she understood people might have New Year's Eve parties to get to, and just generally being bright and pleasant. Not one person waiting registered a complaint.

The day after Christmas, I called the airline's lost baggage assistance line, and ran through the standard automated maze ostensibly designed to route calls to the customer service representative who might be best suited to help, and got a terminal recording: "All our customer service representatives are busy assisting other customers. Good bye!" After six tries, we just got in the car and made the half-hour drive to the airport to see about our luggage in person.

Last night, when the baggage representative told us to call the baggage claim number today, I'm proud to say that I was able to muster the enormous self-restraint it took not to snort in derision at her. She had, after all, arranged to send my younger daughter's bag to Phoenix, even though she'd be flying there on a competing airline. The woman had done all that she could within the limits of the system, and she'd been concerned, even if she wasn't overly pleasant.

Therein lies the problem, I think. There's a system, designed to appear efficient, but which is anything but. Companies go to great lengths to tell their customers that automation is there to allow them to provide better service, but the reality is that the automation is there to avoid having to employ people whose salaries might be put to better use bankrolling the wildly overpayed CEO. (The "retention bonus" paid by bankrupt United Airlines to its CEO in 2004 was equal to...get this...what a customer service representative at United can make in fifteen years working fifty hours a week.)

It doesn't take much to make a customer feel appreciated. When I brought my car in for service in November, the customer service representative with whom I had my appointment was with another customer, so another rep helped me right away. After doing all the paperwork and making sure I was comfortable in the lounge (with a capucchino), he briefed my service rep on what I wanted and what was being done to my car...and it was MY customer service rep....the one I had the appointment with...who came to update me on the status an hour later, and who gave me my keys and my paperwork when the car was finished. The runner who went to get my car asked if I wanted it washed or if I had some place pressing to be (it was a weekday morning), and when I opted not to have him wash the car, he told me to just drop by any time and the dealership would wash the car for me. Two days later, the dealership called me to ask if I was happy with how I was treated and what was done to my car, and if I had any ideas that might help them improve the quality of their service. A few days after that, the manufacturer called me to ask if I was happy with the dealership. Not once was I subjected to an automated customer service phone maze.

Most people I talk to think this kind of service is beyond any reasonable expectation, but I disagree. It doesn't cost anything to be polite, and though it may take a few more minutes to ask, "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" and then actually do it, that sort of treatment builds customer loyalty and actually makes money for the company. Think about it: I spent more than a thousand dollars to fly to Casper. The two hours it took to make sure I was happy on Christmas Eve cost the company two hours' pay for the representative, and a couple meal vouchers...some $31 in total. The airline rep who dropped what she was doing to let me into the baggage room in Casper the day after Christmas took perhaps fifteen minutes out of her day, at a cost to the company of a whopping $2.25. Had I not been so abysmally treated by other employees of that airline, that $33.25 investment might have guaranteed thousands of dollars revenue, simply by creating a loyal customer.

It's unfortunate for the airline that the ticket-crusher I wrote about in my prevous post doesn't understand that. Nor do the baggage handlers and maintenance techs who can't be bothered with doing the job right. There will always be customers who are unreasonable and insulting, as was the woman I met in Denver who was wearing a full-length ermine coat. She was upset that the airline had brought her to Denver at all, since her flight was bound for Aspen. It had diverted for mechanical problems...flaps that would not fully deploy, which meant that the minimum landing distance for the airplane was greater than the length of the runway in Aspen. When she stopped her ranting for a moment, I said, "Well, better to spend Christmas Eve in the wrong airport than to spend it strewn all over the woods near the right one." She blinked at me twice and barked, "I have a home in Aspen." When she approached an airline employee, she said, "I'm looking for someone with enough intelligence to..." The guy smirked as he listened, no doubt wishing for the sudden appearance of a PETA crusader armed with a bucket of blood.

I think it was the film "Kelly's Heroes" which introduced the pseudo-Latin phrase, Illigitimati non carborundum: Don't let the bastards grind you down. Human nature being what it is, this slogan ought to be the defacto motto for anyone who deals with customers in any way, shape, or form. Unpleasantness on the part of people who haven't gotten what they paid for should never be an excuse for bad service.

When I was on my first ship, I had a chief who would inspect my work, and if he found it lacking, he'd say, "There's never time to do it right the first time, but there's always time to do it again." His words came back to me years later, when I was the chief, because the price of failing to do the job right the first time was often too high to contemplate.

I don't think that my military service has made me unreasonable in my expectations. Rather, it instilled in me a sense of how little difference in effort there is between doing the minimum and doing one's best, between getting in people's way and taking others into consideration.

I'll wrap this up now. Our baggage should have been on the ground in San Diego for seven hours now, and I still haven't heard a word.

Next year? I'm driving.