My Trip on America West, Or Why Customer Service Still Matters.

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Author: Alsop, Stewart

Alsop On Infotech

I just spent 45 minutes buying an upgrade to a roundtrip flight on America West Airlines. And, boy, do I feel like a fool!

My wife, Charlotte, and I had reservations to fly from San Jose to Phoenix and back for a computer-industry conference. We had nonrefundable coach tickets costing $295 per person. On a lark, I decided that we should upgrade to first class. Since I never fly on America West, I would have had to pay for the upgrade.

We arrived at the gate at 9:45 A.M. The flight was scheduled to depart at 10:36. We boarded the plane at 10:30 A.M.

Why the delay? Because buying a simple upgrade at a cost of $250 each way per person took 45 minutes. It required the full-time attention of one of the two gate clerks, as well as assistance from the gate supervisor. Everyone else on the plane had to check in with the one other gate attendant, a process that--of course--took twice as long as usual. As they waited in line, they all could see that I was the one holding things up. And the five other people going to the same conference, all of whom I know pretty well, could see I was holding them up to actually pay for a first-class upgrade! That's why I feel like a fool--like me, the five are frequent travelers, people who should know better than to try to upgrade at the last minute.

Everybody has horror stories about airline travel. So why am I wasting your time with mine (other than for the therapy value of venting in public and hopefully embarrassing the heck out of America West)? Here's why: As a columnist, I keep writing about how companies can use technology, mostly the Internet and the World Wide Web, to provide better customer service, get a competitive edge, or be more efficient. What I forget is that some companies are still incompetent at providing old-style, real-life customer service. These days there's often a connection between the two problems, as I experienced with America West. So I'm telling this horror story because I think that, as we design the fabulous digital future, it's worth remembering the frustrating, annoying things we're trying to leave behind.

Think about this: I was a customer who wanted to pay an extraordinarily high price (almost twice the original airfare) for something that costs the airline little more than the price of a better snack. This airline would have carried me to Phoenix and back in any case for the original $295 fare, but I wanted to pay an extra $500 for the privilege of sitting in seats that, as it turned out, would have been empty anyway. The airline's response to this opportunity? Forcing me to stand in line and making me feel like a blithering idiot in front of my friends and spouse.

I don't know much about America West, other than what I read in CEO William A. Franke's column in the front of the October issue of the airline's magazine. Mr. Franke claims that America West is one of the fastest-growing airlines. I don't know whether it has a good reputation for customer service. I don't know whether it's well managed. I haven't looked at its Website. I don't know whether Mr. Franke is considered a good CEO, although he does claim to be interested in providing America West customers with the "very best facilities, equipment, and service." So this is not a heavily researched column; this is a heavily personal column. That's the kind of experience people have on airplanes: heavily personal, and often terrible.

The company's employees appear dedicated. The gate clerks and flight attendants on our flight were really interested in providing good service and being friendly. The snacks in first class (particularly those Confetti Mix trail-mix packages!) were really good, far better than I've ever gotten on United. And the America West flight was the only nonstop we could find between Phoenix and either San Francisco or San Jose. These kinds of things are very important considerations in buying airline tickets.

But I also know that the company is missing something pretty important. It clearly hasn't considered the possibility that encouraging customers to pay more for its service and rewarding them for doing so might be a good way to increase shareholder value. You should have seen the poor gate clerk try to respond to my request to upgrade our tickets. She spent considerable time typing mysterious commands into her computer terminal and then making exclamations like, "Oh, my God! How did that happen?" or "Darn, what do I do now?" Both the gate supervisor and the other gate clerk stepped in at different times to help her accomplish the task. And in the middle of the whole event, she had to fill out carbon-copy forms to serve as credit card receipts for the transaction, one each for my ticket and my wife's ticket. She and the supervisor were making notes on a piece of paper so they could remember numbers from one transaction for the other. I felt bad for the lady; she was clearly competent and trying very hard to provide service to me.

My (evidently unreasonable) expectation is that there would be a command or button on her screen to upgrade a ticket, which would then ask for a credit card number, produce a boarding pass and receipt, and allow the clerk to send us on our way. The system would be happy to let me spend an outrageous amount of money for slightly better service. I have done it on United Airlines and American Airlines without difficulty. But America West's computer systems clearly did not take this event into account, so my gate clerk had to find a way around the system to sell me an upgrade.

This failure raises a series of questions: Does the CEO of America West Airlines know enough about the technology his company uses to give appropriate direction to the IT department? Has the IT department designed and tested its systems to handle unexpected or unusual requests? Has the marketing department for America West figured out that it might be useful to encourage customers to pay for upgrades and improved service? Has the marketing department spoken with the IT department about how the computer systems might help provide positive reinforcement for high-margin customers? Has the marketing department analyzed the profit contribution of different customers at different price points?

These days, a simple failure of customer service is apt to raise all those questions and more in the minds of a company's ever more technologically sophisticated clientele. If my own employer can get it right, they're bound to ask, why can't this *#@!*^%# airline? The important thing here isn't whether the company has designed its computer system or trained its personnel well. It's that the company has missed an opportunity to win a long-term loyal customer. This is the kind of thing that should really annoy shareholders. Maybe even more than it annoyed me.

PHOTO (COLOR): STEWART ALSOP

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By STEWART ALSOP

STEWART ALSOP is a partner with New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm. Except as noted, neither he nor his partnership has a financial interest in the companies mentioned. His column may be bookmarked online at www.fortune.com/technology/alsop/. I wanted to pay for first-class seats. So the airline made me stand in line and feel like a blithering idiot.