Air Canada customer satisfaction

Two weeks ago I had the occasion to fly Air Canada to Seattle for the Ad-Tech Impact event “Key Metrics For Marketers”. The trip was less than eventful except for numerous flight delays related to mechanical problems on two separate aircraft. Instead of arriving in Seattle at 10:30 PM PST as planned, I arrived in Vancouver at 1:00 AM (PST) with a connection to Seattle the next day at 7:30 AM. I made it to the conference with minutes to spare with lived with the fact that there’s not much any of us can do to minimize the inconvenience and hassles flight delays sometimes cause.

Today I received a pleasant surprise when I opened my Aeroplan frequent flyer account to discover Air Canada had added 4,000 points to the account for the inconvenience caused by their mechanical problems. When one talks about customer service and customer satisfaction, at least in this case Air Canada scored major points with me.

I’m not sure who gets credit for this. It would be great if this were standard procedure. If not, then credit goes to the astute agent who rebooked my flight after the second delay. Either way, Air Canada has realized that it doesn’t take too much to keep their customers satisfied. By simply acknowledging a problem and doing something to say were sorry, they have indicated to me at least that they not only "talk the talk" but they "walk the talk" and genuinely value my business. Hats off to Air Canada.

What Air Canada demonstrated by their actions in the traditional bricks and mortar world is something we believe every marketer in the online sector must emulate.

Stay in tune with your web site visitor's experience and at the first sign of disatisfaction, make sure you respond.