“23 Business Days to Respond” Lessons in Goodwill and Customer Experience
posted by Deven Desai
This line should never be part of a customer service message “If you have requested a response to your email, you should hear from from [sic] us within 23 business days.” In other words, thanks but we will take more than a month to respond. It takes chutzpah to send such a message, especially after the customer was directed to the email system as the phone system was overloaded. The source? Northwest Airlines. The result: A customer who will endeavor never to fly the airline again and will pay competitors a little more for that option. It is not just this experience that fueled the decision. In fact, I am willing to listen to companies’ apologies and stay loyal if the over all experience is solid and some amends are made for the poor service at issue. What is impressive is that NW has had several chances to change my impression but instead it has shown that NW is a consistent sign of source and quality – just poor quality. The full details are a bit comical and are below the fold along with some observations about customer complaints, brand strength, goodwill, and market opportunities.
Until this year I had never consistently flown NW before but did so to attend a couple of Peter Yu’s great conferences at Michigan State University. I also flew the airlines to Europe for the recent Law and Society Conference. For both the conferences at MSU I thought the service was weak – delays, less than nice personnel, sub-par plane interiors. When the Europe trip came up I was on the fence, but the airlines had the best routes and price for my trip to Europe from San Diego. Now that performance was incredible in the unbelievable sense of the word.
After delays getting to Detroit, I missed my flight to Amsterdam. I was promised that being on the next flight at 7 p.m. would still allow my bag to reach on time. I reached Amsterdam to find that it did not. Fair enough, these things happen, but I was then informed that instead of sending it on the next flight at 9 p.m. the previous day, NW put my bag on the next day’s first flight which meant at least 24 hours before my bag would arrive, let alone be delivered to me. The next day, Saturday, instead of the airline calling as promised, I had to call. I was then told yes the bag has arrived some time before but sorry the truck left and for some reason the bag was not on it. And no, a real reason was not given.
The next plan was that the bag would arrive Saturday between 6 and 10 p.m. It did not. One more call resulted in a promise of a messenger service leaving the airport by 11 p.m. to arrive by midnight. He arrived at 1 a.m. and woke the friends I was staying with to deliver the bag. That resulted in my call and email with the response above. The flight back was a bit better but still my willingness to give the company a break had left, so little things like a smaller plane without the personal video systems on many international flights including the one I had into Europe on NW, the continual delays to fix air conditioning, and a series of announcements that other flights were delayed because they lacked attendants, were overbooked, or had too much weight again made me think “joke airline.” This view was shared by others I encountered (more on that below).
So after several experiences this year with Northwest Airlines (KLM in Europe) I can say that it has amply demonstrated the somewhat visceral way that goodwill can be lost. Worse, reading online sections called Customers First and a letter in the NW magazine both signed by Douglas Steenland, President and Chief Executive Officer, only exacerbated my view of NW as a presenting a façade of a service consisting of useless platitudes with no performance.
From a trademark perspective, I wonder whether anyone ever asks for customer services records as they defend claims of tarnishing or blurring or to counter claims that a brand is famous for its years of good service. Of course one might ask why one would try to trade on NW’s goodwill, but it is a big brand. That alone allows it to ride on poor service and even might give someone reason to trade on the attention value of the name regardless of the truth of the service’s quality. In other words, like residual goodwill, brand strength alone can be powerful despite poor service. Indeed, the only explanation I found for my use and the use of others who had less than favorable views of the airlines was that it dominated some markets and had some price advantages because of that. As such, if Southwest attacked the NW markets and other carriers the international routes, my guess is that NW would be in big trouble.
August 1, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Posted in: Intellectual Property
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Responses (5)
Eric Goldman - August 1, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Google “Northworst.” Eric.
Bruce Boyden - August 1, 2007 at 9:27 pm
When I taught at MSU a couple of years ago while maintaining a home base in DC, I flew Northwest a lot. It was a direct flight and I never had any problems with it. But I met several Northwest frequent fliers, and they all uniformly bad-mouthed the airline. It felt like when I toured East Germany in 1988, and our tour group was approached by numerous East Germans who proceeded to tell us how awful the country was.
WIlliam McGeveran - August 1, 2007 at 10:52 pm
The airline may finally be getting the message, Deven. The CEO was on the radio here in the Twin Cities this morning apologizing for recent (horrendous) service problems.
Janet - August 1, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Just this Saturday night I had to pick up a friend at the Philly bus station at 2 AM because Northwest stranded her at LaGuardia and she had to take the bus back. She never did get where she was going.
Deven - August 2, 2007 at 10:26 am
Wow I had the impression as you all report that others were having trouble with the airline but Eric’s tip and Bill’s note show how fast these issues can catch up with a company. I went to, what I think, was one of the first conferences on marketing and blogs a few years back (at least it was the first by the marketing industry). The group noted that honest CEO blogs can help a company, but classic spin could fuel online image problems. They had some good examples of high-level executives being honest about glitches and set-backs and how people seemed to respond well and had more on opaque responses that generated derision and rejection of the company. The hard part for public companies might be the securities regulations about public statements. Someone must have written about that but I can’t say that I have seen or looked for that material.
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