When bad weather disrupts travel, airlines often offer customers full or partial refunds on their tickets or allow customers to change their tickets or destinations without penalty. Unfortunately, car rental companies and hotels typically don't offer the same types of options, but it's something they should consider.
Companies in the hospitality industry are missing great opportunities to differentiate their brands when faced with so-called "Act of God" situations. By offering customers guaranteed refunds or opportunities to rebook reservations at another time, this is a great way for car rental and hotel companies to build real loyalty.
These represent "moments of truth" for many customers, particularly since customer expectations typically aren't that high during a major weather event.
During a recent snowstorm, I tried to reschedule a set of flights for my family and I from New York to Florida. I was on hold with the airline for 50 minutes, which gave me plenty of time to contemplate these issues. I wondered, for instance, whether airlines try to rebook their most valuable customers first when there are long wait times in the contact center queue or limited seats available on the next departing flights.
When weather disrupts travel, hospitality companies should seize the opportunity to tighten relationships with customers. In our case, the airline couldn't rebook our flights until five days after the storm. By then it would've been too late for us to take this trip.
Being prepared
Weather impacts travel all the time. As such, hospitality companies (hotels, car rental agencies, and airlines) should have standardized procedures for dealing with these situations, including ways to manage their interactions with customers. For instance, customers whose travel plans are inconvenienced by a storm could receive a personalized call, text, or email from a travel company once normal operations resume, offering them promotional rates or providing additional services.
Some power companies already provide these types of service notifications, often proactively to customers, alerting them via Facebook, IVR blasts, and text notifications about a power outage and when service can be expected to return.
There are a few benefits to this approach. By reaching out proactively to customers and giving them timely information about outages in their neighborhoods, utilities are able to reduce call volumes to their contact centers, thus lowering operational costs. Meanwhile, power companies are providing customers with the type of information they're looking for when they need it. This helps to strengthen the company-customer relationship.
Positive outcomes
Sometimes, even a storm-related travel snag that percolates into a PR nightmare can end up with a positive outcome when a company takes a customer-centric approach to resolving customer issues. On Valentine's Day 2007, an ice storm in the Northeast U.S. forced JetBlue to cancel scores of flights out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York; many passengers were stuck inside planes on the tarmac for hours. Over the ensuing few days JetBlue continued to cancel flights, angering thousands of its passengers.
Then-CEO David Neeleman quickly realized that he needed to take action to save the company's image. Within days of the events, he repeatedly apologized to customers online, in television interviews, using social networks, and various other touchpoints. He then promised that the airline would enact a customer bill of rights, which it did. Among other provisions in the bill of rights, JetBlue promises to either reimburse or reassign customers whose flights are canceled. When irate customers continue to vent their anger at JetBlue in the blogosphere, loyal customers rose to the company's defense, pointing to the airline's otherwise superlative track record and asking angry customers to cut the company some slack, which they eventually did.
Another customer-centric approach is used by Emirates. When Emirates is forced to cancel a flight, its customers receive a small care package while they're still at the airport, including prepaid phone cards to notify relatives and persons they were planning to visit. The care package also includes a written apology. Delta/KLM takes a similar approach for international flights. However, the airline misses the opportunity to use it as a relationship strengthening exercise by not following up with individual customers and instead subscribing to a one-size-fits-all model.
Cancelled flights and other travel disruptions usually leave customers annoyed. However, these disruptions provide hospitality companies with the perfect opportunity to please customers -- especially because customer expectations are often at their lowest levels. Companies that respond quickly to customer needs in a personalized manner can help protect and strengthen customer relationships in the long run.
About the Author: Orkun Oguz is a Partner of Peppers & Rogers Group. Contact him at ooguz@1to1.com.