I was assigned a bulk head seat (business class) on the Asian airline I had selected to carry me the distance. Unfortunately, on this particular plane, bulk head meant a good thirty percent less leg room. Since it was an overnight flight, I was looking forward to sleeping across Asia and into Europe. I'm almost six feet tall and my legs simply didn't fit in the room allocated to me.

I asked for a seat change. The flight attendants attempted to help, but couldn't do anything. No one else wanted that seat. They even asked a very short Asian woman if she would trade with me, and she decided it was not enough space even for her.

Business class seats are not inexpensive. I didn't eat the dinner meal that we were served at twelve midnight. I never drink alcohol, so I'm a low cost business class flyer in terms of liquor charges. The video unit at my seat didn't work properly.

My expectations were vastly different when I paid the fee required to book this business class seat. Am I being unreasonable in expecting more?

I'm actually going to write this airline and ask for a 30% reduction on the fare for this portion of the flight. My expectations are that in business and first class, one is primarily paying for space, and if my leg room was a good 30% less than the seat directly behind me, doesn't it stand to reason that I should receive some reduction in air fare?

I didn't say anything to the airline crew while on board the plane. They were all so sweet saying goodbye, as we left the aircraft, smiling so genuinely, thanking us for our business, that to stop and douse cold water on their efforts made me think that expressing a complaint at that time would be rude.

If one buys a car, and one model has extra features compared to another, you expect a price differential. This basic sense of fairness probably sits front and foremost in most people's minds when they evaluate products and services. Who is responsible for managing these expectations? Certainly, if left up to the consumer, we will apply models from one industry to another industries. If the airlines want us to be satisfied with paying the same price for a business class seat that has cramped leg room, and we only get to find out about this after we have boarded the plane and it is too late to do anything about it, then they need to do some public education about this. 

Perhaps airlines should have a sign: "Caution. The seat you are actually about to sit in not match the advertised picture of this seat. Leg room be cramped. Your reading light not work. Your video screen not work. Management is not responsible for these discrepancies." 

My second example occurred in Frankfurt's sprawling airport. I fly through that airport several times a year, and find it is one of the poorest signed airports in the world. I constantly get lost there, but that I expect, as I do not track locations or maps well. I depend on the good directions of people around me to help. My experience in Frankfurt is that no two people possess the same answers as to where things are located.

For example, on this trip I received no less than four different sets of directions about where to catch my connecting flight. One man insisted that I should trust him because he wore some kind of official epaulets. Actually, his directions put me into Germany, rather than to connection gates. One official airline guide who met us as we deplaned from Kuala Lumpur to answer our questions was actually quite annoyed that I didn't want to know where to pick up my luggage. It seemed that was the only direction she accurately knew how to disseminate. Another man insisted I used an electronic information guide that didn't possess the information I needed to know. 

My expectations? Anyone working in an airport should know where things are. Maybe Frankfurt's challenge is the complexity and size of the airport, but in my estimation, this simply means the officials there need to allocate more time and resources to ensuring that the people who work there can tell the users of that facility where things are located—accurately! I've never experienced poor direction giving in Amsterdam's airport, for example, and it's quite a large airport as well. The signs there are easy to follow.

When TMI conducts seminars in hotels, we scope the hotel to learn where the restrooms are, where the various restaurant outlets, the lobby shop, and the telephones are located. We think it is reasonable that anyone who is remotely connected to us as a customer ask us a question, and we demonstrate care for our customers by being able to provide those answers. 

Customers reasonably expect that people affiliated with a facility should know where things are. And if this is not the case, then perhaps the establishment should better manage customer expectations by posting signs that read: "Don't ask anyone working in this airport where things are located. It's not part of their job responsibility to tell you, and they don't know anyway." That would do it!

Janelle Barlow, coauthor
A Complaint Is a Gift
 
 

Previous "Complaint Is A Gift Corner" pages: 
 

#1	Overselling Service
#2	Not Listening to Complaints
#3	Plastic Chicken
#4	Complaints You Can Do Nothing About
#5	A+ Complaint Handling
#6	Beware! Others are Watching You
#7	At Least Keep Talking!
#8	Let Customers Know You'll Tell Someone
#9	If You're Going to Apologize, Then Mean It
#10	Keep Front-life Staff Well Informed
#11	Don't Set Goals to Reduce Complaints
#12	Products Used During Special Events
#13	Best Practices of Complaint-friendly Organizations
#14	Complaints About Mother Nature!
#15	Socially Offensive Situations
#16	A Complaint Is a Gift in Action
#17	Information Systems  Users' Complaints, I
#18	Information Systems  Users' Complaints, II
#19	Creating an Internal Service Culture
#20	When Your Customers are Industrial Buyers
#21	Customers Who are Poor Complainers
#22	Complaints That are Difficult to Talk About
#23	Do You Mistreat Your Customers?
#24	Fairness: Treatment of Staff

We invite you to submit your "best" examples by fax or e-mail. We won't print any company names with the "poor" examples, because we believe that every organization fails from time to time. We will give credit to companies delighting their customers. In the case of the "poor" examples, we'll comment on how we think this situation could have been handled better. If you want us to list your name, please tell us that is what you want to do.

A Complaint Is a Gift, The Training Program 

A Complaint Is a Gift, The Book

Note: We have been getting e-mail from our readers asking us to list the names of the companies who get complaints. Our policy is to never list names. The reason for this is because every company fails from time to time, and we wouldn't want to tar some company's name just because of one bad example. Furthermore, we are dependant upon the writer's side of the story. We don't know for sure what happened, and in the name of fairness, we will not post names. Furthermore, the purpose of this corner is not to pass complaints along to corporations. This Complaint Is a Gift corner is designed to look at examples of good and bad complaint handling so we can learn from these experiences. Please, if you have a direct complaint you want a company to learn about, contact them directly. In many cases, we have never heard of the company in question and have no idea how to reach them. Janelle Barlow

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