Wednesday, August 13

Customer Loyalty

I was coming back from Mumbai via Indian Airlines (now known as Air India). As you would have it, the flight was delayed by 90 minutes ... the passengers were sitting in the flight without the airplane moving a single inch. Finally, when the flight reached Hyderabad, I took a cab to office, half the day was wasted ... hrrrumph!!

On my way to the office, I receive a call from an Air India representative, saying that 4 air miles have been accrued to my account and I can check those at so and so url, all I need to do is keep my boarding passes with me. Just how idiotic is this ... for travelling 1600 miles, I get 4 air miles ... so after 400 trips with Air India, I will finally get one flight free of cost. That's a discount of 0.25%

If only they can take that discount and use the savings to bolster their infrastructure and setup so that such flight delays do not occur. I would rather pay that discount instead of waiting those additional 90 minutes. Does the marketing department of Air India have a warped definition of customer loyalty?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

thts quite an tempting offer from indian airlines...probably even 100 air miles might get you a hotel voucher or something...if the miles can be redeemed only on air tickets, i agree with you....and god knows, when would IA pull up their socks and start competing with private players on customer service

Unknown said...

couldnt agree more @ don.

Hypnos said...

But the question is: even how many private players are good on customer service? I can think of just two, and only their "full-price" offerings are good enough.

Unknown said...

Frankly, I cant think of any at the moment. No one is perfect ... most of the airlines have bombed out sometime or the other!

Unknown said...

Although I get the gist of what you are trying to say, aren't you stretching the round trip mileage between Hyderabad and Mumbai? :)
The straight line distance between them being less than 400 miles. :D

And to repeat myself from orkut - PICS!!!!!!!!!!!