The Best rule of customer service
 

I respectfully change my rules to

as given by manintheback.

Given the current charged atmosphere and lack of civility we need to adapt rules accordingly.

:D

Having flown through various uk airports when BA used to 1) operate a regional network and 2) emply their own check-in staff, I always found the BA staff polite, helpfull and curtious at EDI/MAN/BHX/LHR/LCY. Whilst I've broadly found the Aliance staff to be polite and curtious, they sometimes seem less able (or willing?) to help out. This however pales into insignificance in comparison to the level of service offered by Swissport - a company for whom employees evidently find passengers an irritation that gets in the way of them enjoying a social life at uk airports. Frankly the ground handling abilities of that company are sometimes so poor, you'd start looking for alternative carriers to avoid them!

What this post shows is an aspect of cost which is often forgotten in the dash to increased margins when you subcontract something out.

You have to supervise your subcontractors and check they are providing an adequate service.

Rules of doing an inspection :

1. Have both announced and unannounced inspections, and note the difference between the two.

2. Do not send the same inspector too often in case they and the subcontractor's managers get too matey.

3. Anything seen which is not quite right get it sorted out, permanently, the same day. That can include front line staff who will not be handling your passengers again.

4. Choose your inspectors carefully. Do not have ones who go in with their own attitude problems and enjoy messing the subcontrractor about, likewise do not have ones who go looking for backhanders, or will just tick everything as OK without looking at it.

5. Have rigorous criteria to assess the subcontractor by.

6. Have a contract that really can be terminated, or have payments reduced, if it's not all up to scratch.

Phoenix, Arizona, I find outstanding - so is the security operation in politeness and efficiency and genuine helpfulness

An interesting contrast with some of the experiences of passengers in this thread - once they reached the safety of the terminal:

BA288 Emergency at Phoenix

Jack

PS Radeng - At least you remain consistent about Phoenix!:ok:

As I have just spent two hours trying to get this internet connection to work, from a small place in Greece, you can take my silence any way you want.

A ten second Google threw up this site.

Ryanair Customer Reviews and Ryanair Passenger Opinions about Ryanair Product and Ryanair service standards

This assumes the subcontractor (supplier) is the one at fault.

Far more often it's the purchaser of the services (airline in this case) who is the ultimate cause of the poor service as they will not pay the supplier enough money to provide a decent service. Also very common is the large company will agree a price, the service provider will resource accordingly, then the large company will come back and say they aren't prepared to pay that price any more. The supplier ends up subsidising the airline's bottom line.

Look at the Gate Gourmet fiasco. Gate Gourmet were essentially told how much a meal would cost and they were to provide food for that price. GG couldn't do it and we all know what happened next.

A well run company like Walmart will have a replacement supplier in the wings to step in when they have driven the first supplier out of business. A well run company like Ryanair will have another airport to go to when their first airport can no longer drop their prices any further. Pooly run companies don't have a fallback when their catering supplier cannot deliver the goods for the prices specified by the airline.

Even though it's the airline who has driven standards down by their refusal to pay the supplier a reasonable amount of money to provide the contracted for service.

Nope. They have two. East Midlands and Leeds Bradford for Manchester... :D

Its not allways bad
 

Last year flew MAN - FRA with Lufthansa. Self wife & 3 kids. At MAN we were asked to divert to a BA flight 1 hour later, as Lufthansa flight full of pax requiring quick transfers at FRA to onward flights. No problem I said, we're not in a hurry, - especially as we got around £50 EACH, cash. BA flight great, on time, no problems.

On return, we were stuck in a jam on the Autobahn, dropped off hire car with only 1 hour to go. Saturday morning and airport packed. A guy in Lufthansa uniform saw us at the back of a long check in quew - use the first class check in, he helpfully said. So off we went. Handed in our documents, the typical (efficient) German Lady at check in said "You are late" - so I told her the tale. "No problem - we are here to help" and processsed us quickly, even added "Have a nice flight, goodbye" at the end.

Wish it was like this every time.

Flying Lid