<B> Letters</B>
<h2>Only Just Begun?</h2>
"Airlines: Getting to Know You" (<I>BTN,</I> April 26) gave me a few chuckles. After having been involved in airline marketing for three decades, I could never understand why airlines did not immediately take advantage of what they themselves developed for the travel agency industry--customer-specific profiles that could be accessed by name or file number by anyone with a CRS terminal. They now use them for special reservations "desks," but I never get an impression that everyone who is likely to talk to a customer can access those profiles and thus relate their discussion to history.
Furthermore, I could never understand why airlines have been so reluctant to exploit their frequent flyer member databases to pinpoint messages about new service principally to those known to be true prospects. Every year, as summer approaches in Palm Springs, I call American Eagle's operations office at the airport to find out what level of service is planned for flights to L.A., Chicago, and Dallas/Ft. Worth. For a few years, American sent me a timetable, but now they have abandoned that catalogue. Oh well, it arrived too late for my planning anyway.
My alternatives are fewer today: I can call my agency, but they charge me $10 if they issue an invoice or itinerary. I can try some of the wonderful options on the Internet which, for some reason, is more often than not inaccessible to me without tedious waits. I can telephone the airline, another likely opportunity to wait for a live person; at least they play Mozart while I wait!
When you see oxymoronic headlines like "Carriers Focus on Customers" or "Airlines Target Big Spenders," you wonder where they've been for the past 18 years since frequent flyer programs became a substitute for any other possible marketing innovation. You also wonder how airlines can build their business plan on big spenders when, in truth, some of the biggest spenders on air travel have to be some of the dumbest people alive.
After all, U.S. airlines have now transformed their offerings into a commodity; price is usually king in commodity purchases; certainly no intelligent purchaser is going to buy expensive just to keep airlines happy. After depriving their customers of even minimal service levels in the interest of saving money to survive for years, airlines cannot seriously think that they should pay a lot of attention to those fat cats who ignore the value issue.
Really, their best customers are those who know how to get around airline draconian pricing schemes and still remain loyal to them.
A couple of kudos along with my diatribe against those companies who, despite my satisfaction with one of them as an employer in an earlier era, have really no recognition of what a customer is:
Southwest Airlines, which has done more to assure air transportation value than any other airline;
Continental Airlines, which has returned civilized service to air transportation.
I had two great flights last week on United Shuttle. No acceptable substitute for food was offered--United, like American, doesn't dare serve peanuts, though Southwest risks lawsuits from victims of peanut allergies. (I wonder if they have to print that warning on their e-tickets: "When flying on our airline, you may be exposed to the smell of peanuts and we therefore warn you in advance so you can't sue us.")
An incredibly sensitive United flight attendant, Krista Zimmer, made me feel very special between San Francisco and Spokane on Tuesday and then, I was lucky enough to have her on my flights from Spokane to San Francisco and Los Angeles on Wednesday. She reminded me that service still exists!
<i>Rolfe R. Shellenberger
Runzheimer International
Palm Desert, Calif.</i>
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<a name="2"><h2>Putting the 'R' In CRM</h2>
It was great to see the emphasis on customer relationship management in your recent issue (<I>BTN,</I> April 26). The article subtitled "Carriers Focus on Customers" might better have been titled "Carriers Focus on Customer Information"--a subtle distinction journalistically, but a world of difference for the customer.
As is well known, the airlines are at the forefront when it comes to customer-related information technology. The question that must be asked is whether at the actual point of customer contact--electronically, face-to-face, telephone or otherwise--all this customer relationship marketing technology is paying off in terms of a different passenger experience.
Usually, the answer is no. There typically persists a large gap between the customer relationship marketing strategies that companies deploy and the customer relationship marketing services they deliver to their customers.
The airlines are justifiably proud of their yield management systems, but they are also infamous for their non-differentiated pricing to their best customers. With all the talk about CRM, the "R"--the relationship--is the part that customers crave most, whether it's high-tech, high-touch or (more usually) a combination of both.
To date, the customer relationship marketing spending is on technology, and not on enabling employees to deliver relationship.
Surely, technology is an essential foundation for effective customer relationship marketing. But until the carriers transform their organizations--not just their systems--into customer-focused organizations, customer dissatisfaction will continue to rise. And until the carriers' employees are enlisted in the customer relationship marketing effort, through a process that enables them to apply customer information and allocate their efforts profitably, the customer experience will continue to diminish.
While Air France's Fidelio system is a good start by folding in "the human element" by giving gate agents a list of choices for resolving service issues for high-value customers, there still lies the issue surrounding customer service "empowerment."
Think back to the last time you had your own personal service issue at the airport. Would you have breathed a sigh of relief to find that the service representative had a pre-programmed list of choices? Would that be enough?
<I>Debbie St.