Alaska Airlines 'gets it'
I opened up my gmail this afternoon to find this:
24-hrs ahead of our flight to Seattle to go to Gnomedex, we receive a nice note from Alaska Airlines that includes some handy information about packing, the weather forecast for the time period we are in Seattle, links to Seattle attractions, a confirmation of our flight time et al, a link to an online check-in (how convenient), and some general information about flying with Alaska Airlines.
Wow. This takes very little time or effort. It's not personalized...just a form letter...but man, it's an awesome start. ('cause remember that the bar on customer service is set really low)
24-hrs ahead of our flight to Seattle to go to Gnomedex, we receive a nice note from Alaska Airlines that includes some handy information about packing, the weather forecast for the time period we are in Seattle, links to Seattle attractions, a confirmation of our flight time et al, a link to an online check-in (how convenient), and some general information about flying with Alaska Airlines.
Wow. This takes very little time or effort. It's not personalized...just a form letter...but man, it's an awesome start. ('cause remember that the bar on customer service is set really low)
6 Comments:
Wow, that is a great start. I flew Alaskan a few weeks ago to go to Vloggercon in San Fran, but I didn't get one of these fancy emails?
Did you fly executive maybe? It's because I am Canadian isn't it? (joke)
Yeah, Alaska is a good airline and really push customer service... until they bump you twice on one trip, once each way. Other than leaving me a bit bitter about that trip they are generally a good airline, especially compared to the other options.
You know, this isn't entirely altruistic. If they send you something like this, first of all, it minimizes the chances of something going wrong and you being a pissed-off customer. It also makes it more likely that you'll arrive early, be prepared, and not screw up the boarding for everyone else. Less customer service time, more preprinted boarding passes, etc. People don't expect to have a wonderful, moving experience when flying -- they just are happy if something doesn't go wrong, and an automated email like this makes that less likely. I suspect that passenger problems on airlines are incredibly expensive -- paying for hotel rooms, delivering your luggage, etc. If one passenger per flight avoids these issues because of this, the airline's saved a lot of money. It's like the system at Disneyland for shortening your wait in lines. It makes your experience more pleasant, sure, but it also enables them to pack more people into the same park.
I am glad to hear that you liked our pre-trip e-mail miss rogue. As director of alaskaair.com I was excited when we launched that service and hoped folks would find it useful like you described. If you have any other feedback on improvements/enhancements that could be made I welcome your comments.
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Devlon, Yikes! That is not supposed to happen. It certainly is not because you are Canadian. We have unfortunately had a few hiccups on our side which we are working on and that may have been the reason. Of course, there are the other possibilities, in the uncertainties of e-mail delivery across the net (e.g. spam filters, mail server outages, etc.).
Scott, sorry to hear you had a bad experience, but thanks for hanging in there and still keeping a good opinion of Alaska Airlines. You are right in recognizing that customer service is very important to us. I appreciate your feedback and apologize for the inconvenience we created for you. Our operations team is aware of those issues and working to improve.
Mark
Whoa, companies are actually participating in the discussions. Cool!
Devlon, make sure you book at alaskaair.com! If you book on Expedia or others, do not expect the same level of service you would receive from alaskaair.com direct.
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