When Airlines Lose Your Bags The Best Thing To Do Is Yell

Dear Community,

A friend of mine (some of you may know him as AdWordsPro or AdWords advisor) sent me this article today:

http://www.traffick.com/2009/08/google-zappos-and-new-pr-communications.asp

I'm not gonna lie- Im not a big article reader. I bought the Economist for the plane ride home and got about a 1/3rd of the way through each article before eating peanuts and taking a nap. But for this one, I read the full thing. I even found myself emphatically nodding which I'm sure looked really weird- like something had gone very wrong with my neck.

For those of you who aren't big readers, the article boils down to this for me:

"When more people are qualified and willing to speak on behalf of the company at a moment's notice, you can get more done. You can draw customers into the dialogue, and solidify your role as a partner. It's a mistake to imagine that there is any other way to go about it. That's especially true in companies that have all sorts of responsible people working on hundreds of products in dozens of divisions".

Amen. As I was saying above, I flew home last week. While I was purchasing the Economist, my airline was busy losing my bag. When I landed, I had to spend 45 minutes interacting with customer support people who couldn't do anything for me. They had no information, no power to give me a voucher, no information about what kind of refund I would get for replacements I would need to purchase while the bag was missing. All they PO Box where I could "air my grievances".

If the airline had given these poor people actual power to interact with me, to speak to me on behalf of the company, the situation would have been totally different. Instead I yelled at them for 45 minutes, ruining both of our nights. Then to make matters worse, I lost the PO Box address, so none of my "grievances" got "aired".

Which is why I nodded emphatically when I read the article. And I suspect, if you read it, and have ever called a 1-800 number, you will find yourself doing as well.

Sarah