Customer Service Trouble: Changing Flights on Continental

As technologists, we all know bad customer service and poorly designed IT systems when we see them. Folks, that's exactly what I saw last Thursday night when I flied from Newark to Charlotte on Continental Airlines. Flights were delayed due to weather and I went to have my flight changed to an earlier flight. Here's what I went through:

  1. Went on the customer service line. Waited five minutes. Agent was able to change my booking onto the earlier flight but could not issue me boarding passes or reroute my luggage. This needed to be done at the gate.
  2. At the gate, a customer on line in front of me takes thirty minutes to change something about his ticket. I have no idea what the issue was, but it took five agents banging away at their keyboard to finish the job.
  3. When it was my turn, the agent was able to print me boarding passes, but she didn't know the procedure to reroute my luggage. She suggested I return in a few minutes, that her shift was almost over, and the supervisor could probably help with this issue. (It should be noted that this agent found me in the waiting area and apologized.)
  4. The supervisor refused to help with this issue. "We don't message for bags during bad weather". Folks, it was drizzling outside. This agent went on to say that customer service messed up and should never had ticketed me on the earlier flight. She was loud and rude.
  5. I went back on the customer service line. The new agent was able to message for my bags.
It took three lines, four agents, and about sixty minutes to complete the change. Clearly, there's something wrong with Continental's systems, training, and procedures.

4 comments:

  1. Shoot!! That's really bad... I think the worst part is that as a company Continental probably doesn't realise how bad of an impact their unorganised and chaotic self is having on their customers.. Queue Web 2.0, social media, and the ability for you as a customer to start talking publicly about their bad policies.. now New Media rocks, cos they'll come back to you, and try to make it better, and make sure it doesn't happen again, if they can afford to train their staff up properly to do their jobs properly in the first place ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shoot!! That's really bad... I think the worst part is that as a company Continental probably doesn't realise how bad of an impact their unorganised and chaotic self is having on their customers.. Queue Web 2.0, social media, and the ability for you as a customer to start talking publicly about their bad policies.. now New Media rocks, cos they'll come back to you, and try to make it better, and make sure it doesn't happen again, if they can afford to train their staff up properly to do their jobs properly in the first place ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes Farhn i am agree with you.i could not forget this night,when i was going to "Morishas" for join a conference through Airlines.which was organized by W.H.O.when i was waiting in airport for my airbus, then a young lady(customer service) was announces wrong message repeated.when i was protest her she tiered me.then i decided that i will no commend more now.i will see her after my journey.

    Thanks
    Rumela
    my site

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh' that's really not good. In my opinion, Good customer service is necessary. I believe that treating the customer so politely makes them so comfortable and satisfied with your services.

    Outsource Call Center

    ReplyDelete

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About Isaac Sacolick

Isaac Sacolick is President of StarCIO, a technology leadership company that guides organizations on building digital transformation core competencies. He is the author of Digital Trailblazer and the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital and speaks about agile planning, devops, data science, product management, and other digital transformation best practices. Sacolick is a recognized top social CIO, a digital transformation influencer, and has over 900 articles published at InfoWorld, CIO.com, his blog Social, Agile, and Transformation, and other sites. You can find him sharing new insights @NYIke on Twitter, his Driving Digital Standup YouTube channel, or during the Coffee with Digital Trailblazers.