This is a guest blog from Nathan Cottom, Mango Operations Manager.
In my past blog post, I discussed the importance of listening and responding to your customers. Communicating with your customers also aligns with these ideas. By communicating with your customers, you can avoid the negative feedback from customers which is purely based off the fact that they were not given all the information about a product or service.
A lot of the time, even with negative information, as long as we effectively communicate this to our customers, there will be more positive feedback from customers.
In this blog post, I will give another example scenario. This depicts a company not communicating changes with their customers. It shows us that even though the information that the customer needed to know was negative, by not telling the customer, there was more negative flow-on effects than if they had just been told the negative information to begin with.
Customers would rather just know and have all the information at their fingertips, including negative information, because they are probably going to find out whatever it is eventually either way. By lying, or avoiding the truth with our customers, we lead them to not trust us, and then not want to do any future business with us.
Scenario
I was recently returning to NZ after a family holiday. We had gone through Customs and Immigration at Melbourne Airport and I had finished looking through the duty-free stores at items were we never intending to buy.
Our flight was due to leave at 6.30pm local time, and the departure boards all said that the flight was on time and that boarding would commence at 5.30pm.
We, along with others on the same flight, dutifully sat around the departure lounge anticipating the boarding call.
All pretty normal so far, as anyone that has travelled anywhere can attest.
5.30pm arrived and the flight attendants started to meet around the departure point. Great the flight is on time.
But then nothing…
5.45pm, 6.00pm, 6.15pm still nothing. No call, no change to the departure boards. Not being a seasoned traveller, I was starting to wonder what was going on. Passengers were starting to get restless and rumours were starting to circulate.
6.30pm, and finally a call to advise to check your seat number and boarding would commence shortly – however now, there was nobody on the gate to check the tickets.
6.45pm – Finally a Boarding call. So the weary travellers all wandered to the gate, only for it to be still blocked by the temporary bollards.
7.00pm – gate finally open and boarding commences, with all passengers a little more frustrated than before.
A delayed flight – no big deal you may say – it happens all the time. You would be right, but the issue here was that there was absolutely no communication regarding the flight until after it had been scheduled to depart.
Takeaways:
- If you have an issue which affects your customers, ensure you communicate this as soon as practical.
- Keep the customer informed can prevent a lot of frustration and inaccurate perceptions about your organisation and how you treat and respect your customers.
