Survey finds passengers call airline service 'dismal' -- No Kidding.

So I was reading the news today and came across the titled article. Here's a quote from it:

"Passengers are more dissatisfied with airlines' customer service than they have been in years at a time when carriers are charging more and more for tickets and services.

"An annual survey being released Tuesday by the University of Michigan found customers giving airlines the worst grades since 2001, with the industry's overall scores dropping for the third straight year."

It's no secret that airline companies are scrambling for money. Ticket prices are increasing, major airlines are going under, other airlines are merging. They're all tightening the belt to save or make more money.

Do you want to know where your customer service is going? How well do you think these airlines treat their employees?

I worked in two different grocery stores and one pizza joint, so I'm kind of acquainted with the customer service industry. The one rule in customer service is this: treat your customers well and they'll come back.

But what's happening more and more is that the owners, always desperate for more money--it seems the more money they make, the more they want--are cutting their spending all over the place. When I worked at the Superstore, they were cutting labour hours drastically, including cashiers, to increase their earnings. If there's one thing you don't do at a grocery store, it's cut your cashier hours.

What resulted, as we expected, was less cashiers working during peak times, resulting in huge long lineups of customers at every cash. We found that more and more customers were leaving their groceries in their carts, at the checkout, and heading to other grocery stores. Do you think those customers will come back? Not to do their major groceries, they won't. Maybe to pick up bread and milk on the way home, if at all. Add to that the cost in labour of putting their unpurchased groceries back on the shelves and the cost of spoiled meat and dairy items being left in the cart too long while they wait (usually 12 hours to two days) for someone to put them away.

The bottom line is, if you want to keep your customers and have record setting customer service, treat your employees well and they will treat your customers well. If you have cranky employees who hate their jobs because they're being forced to do more and more work for less and less money (they get less hours per week--thus less money--and when they do work, they have to work harder because there are fewer people working) they aren't going to be very nice to their customers.

I've worked some places where the employees actually hate the customers. Granted, this is sometimes because the employees have personal problems, but often it's because they have more and more work piling up on them while more customers only mean more work.