What if anything could people have done differently to make the encounter less unpleasant?
A business company is considered to be successful by measuring customer satisfaction. This is something a manager should never forget. Customer satisfaction is in direct relation to the company’s revenues. More satisfied customers translate into more customers. More customers subsequently mean more profits for that company. And customer satisfaction begins with the way you treat a customer. This ‘golden rule’ seemed to have been forgotten by the British Airborne representatives. What should have been done differently was the predisposition to help the client and not ‘get rid of him’. Mr. Singh should have been treated in a different way. The attendance lady should have shown her entire predisposition to help the client even though what he was requiring was out of their competencies. She could have called the marketing manager to speak directly to the client. This would have been a strong signal that the company was doing all it could to help the client. This way Mr. Singh would still be satisfied with the service offered to him from the company even though they might have not fulfilled his request.
How could the boss act to avoid the repetition of this event?
The first measure to be taken is to instruct all the attendance personnel to try and be more friendly and helpful to customers. They are the contact the company has with customers, thus they form a good part of the image of the company. It does not matter if the customer request is something that the company can fulfill or not. What matters is that a positive image must be formed.
This image will be formed when customers see attendance personnel (along with managers) engaged in helping them fulfill their needs and desires and not being barriers. Our case with Miss Smith is the typical case of barrier formation. The wrong reaction from the manager, Parry-Green, was that he praised her mode of behaviour. She might have been correct in her reaction but not in the way she presented it.
What mistake did he make in negotiation and what should he do now?
Mr. Parry-Green should understand that in order to gain market share you have to give concessions. What a manager should look for is the gain in return for these concessions. Arabs and other Asian customers make up a significant part of the market due to their large family numbers. Thus, when they travel they tend to buy multiple tickets at once. The end result is that they will bring to the company a significant cash flow from their ticket purchasing if Parry-Green manages to get them to buy from his company. He should not try to damage the other companies by filing anonymous complaints to IAEA. With that he can achieve only a fine for the other companies. This still would not solve his company’s revenue problems. In fact, he should insist with London in order to make these concessions to the travel agents for this sector of the market. He must, in fact, make better concessions than other rival companies and in return get them to bring customers to his company. This willingness to provide to customers what they want will attract them to this company. Accompanied with the adequate behaviour mentioned above this will increase their level of satisfaction.