Well,


Here I am stuck at the airport. Doesn't seam to matter what time of year I come to Cleveland, there is always a delay that threatens my ability to get home that evening. Don't get me wrong. I love the town, just don't want to fly here anymore. Clearly my luck has run out.

As an aside, I was in Cleveland for a great event. The B to B connect Professional Development day. If you are in the Cleveland or Akron area you should look them up and join a chapter. If you are outside the area and are looking for a great B2B lead sharing group, you should contact them to start a chapter.

Back to the airport. The funny thing about this delay is no one knows why we are delayed and there are no AA staff around to tell us. Maybe the missing gate agents are the reason for the delay? Ahh, finally someone to talk to. Let me go see.....

OK - Air Traffic Ground delay. At least we know its not THEIR fault. Sheeeze, doesn't make it any easier to take. What I do find amusing (and sad) is that the friendly folks at AA don't seam care to tell anyone what is going on. We have been delayed 20 minutes..in fact the TV monitor shows our flight is still in final boarding stages....and no one has bothered to make an announcements. Odd.

It strikes me how many companies create customer service problems for themselves through lack of communication. If the agent would make a single announcement stating. "there is a ground delay. Our estimated wheels up time is 7:45. Sorry about the inconvenience".....

...well wouldn't you know it. It must have been the power of my suggestion...they just made the announcement (25 minutes after our original departure time). I guess the never ending line that started to grow at the counter caused them to take some action.

Back to my previous thought. In sales and service there is no such thing as over-communication. Especially when your clients are faced with a crisis, or problem, you must communicate often. Not communicating is in fact even worse then communicating bad news. When you don't communicate, customers always assume the worst and then are mad about 2 things:

1) the fact you aren't saying anything, and

2) what they assume the problem is.

When you under communicate during a crisis you force the customer to make assumptions. And let's be honest. When the customer makes an assumption during a stressful time are those assumptions typically positive or negative? Negative.

By under communicating you create a worse customer service problem for yourself. Not only do you have a frustrated customer because the original crisis, you have a doubly frustrated customer becausese they are left in the dark.

In a crisis, tell the customer what is going on, and provide regular updates. Even if that update is to say "We have no new news. Just wanted to let you know I am on top of your situation" , your customer will be more at ease, and less likely to lash out at you, or your front line staff.

Sitting here i noticxe that the longer AA takes to make another annoucement the more frustrated the passengers are becoming. I can see it in their body language, and their tone of voice. Its going to get ugly before it gets better and that's sad because it didn't have to be this way.

Communicating is simple. Just tell people the facts, be honest, and genuine and they will responded with more patience, than you expect.

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleen