DC Cookie: Airplane Chivalry reminded me of an article I read a few years ago on customer service.
From Denning and Durham (2003):
When Jan Carlzon became the president of SAS Airlines in 1981, SAS was in deep financial trouble, with declining punctuality, service, and morale. Carlzon fostered a paradigm change he called “moments of truth,” defining a moment of truth as any event that brought SAS to the mind of a customer. He included indirect interactions with customers—for example, a stain on an airliner’s seat was not just a blotch on fabric, it was a moment when a customer formed an impression about the company. Within one year, a large influx of business travellers swung SAS into the black and within 18 months SAS was Airline of the Year. In his book, Calzon (1989) says of this:
At SAS, we used to think of ourselves as the sum total of our aircraft, our maintenance bases, our offices, and our administrative procedures. But if you ask our customers about SAS, they won’t tell you about our planes or our offices or the way we finance our capital investments. Instead, they’ll talk about their experiences with the people at SAS. SAS is not a collection of material assets but the quality of the contact between an individual customer and the SAS employees who serve the customer directly. … [In 1986] each of our 10 million customers came in contact with approximately five SAS employees, and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds each time. Thus, SAS “created” 50 million moments a year, 15 seconds at a time. These 50 million “moments of truth” are the moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company. … We have to place responsibility for ideas, decisions, and actions with the people who are SAS during those 15 seconds: ticket agents, flight attendants, baggage handlers, and all the other frontline employees.
The article was originally about how the IT industry lacks customer service, but they cited this example from the airline industry. As for the IT industry, I can only say this: it is only one of two industries that refers to its customers as users.
Carlzon, J. (1989). Moments of Truth. New York: HarperCollins.
Denning, P. J., & Dunham, R. (2003). The Profession of IT: The Missing Customer. Communications of the ACM, 46(3), 19-23.
