Recently, I spent an hour with an executive coach talking about, among other things, equanimity in the face of situations that induce stress. He gave the example of a time he was driving somewhere and another car cut him off. As he explained, he had the choice of reacting with anger, assuming that the driver was an idiot intent on killing him. The other option was to react more calmly and accept that there was an entire context behind the driving mishap -and that, for his own peace of mind, it was better to avoid the temptation of anger.
I was thinking about that approach as I was penning this article. You see, so many of my weekly articles end up being a case of me shouting into the void with frustration about some perceived slight or other. Really, the answer is to remain equanimous and just let the situation wash over me like water off a duck’s back. Of course, that’s not my nature, and hence here follows a few hundred words that are decidedly non-equanimous.
As readers likely know, I spent 15 or so years flying hundreds of thousands of miles around the world. While this gave me a depressingly large carbon footprint, it also meant I gained membership in the hors categorie of airline status. For those unaware of the term, hors categorie is a classification for mountain stages in the Tour de France that go beyond any sort of normal classification. So, yes, I had airline status that is actually a closely guarded secret and goes beyond the normal classification tiers. Doing so meant that I got to enjoy all the crazy benefits that only get whispered about. It was glorious and made flying so much easier.
I don’t fly nearly as much these days and, quite fairly, have lost that secret status and gone back to being a garden-variety very special person (said with appropriate levels of self-deprecation, in case you were wondering). To give some context and, at the risk of sounding like I’m dragging out an unnecessary humble brag, my flight history is such that I will retain the top airline status level through till my mid-70s, assuming I live that long. So while I have fallen in status, I’m still somewhere amongst the upper echelons of the loyalty scheme.
Of course, I can already hear the howls of derision about entitlement syndrome, first-world problems, old white man disease, and the like. Those would all be justified if my take was that I deserve any sort of special treatment, but that isn’t the case. My perspective is one of consistency, and it is this aspect where my airline of choice has sadly failed of late.
Over the years I travelled so consistently, I spent countless hours talking to fellow travellers. There is a bit of a secret-handshake club among people who fly constantly and a lingua franca within which they can compare notes, pass on insider knowledge, and generally maximize the benefits of the travel experience. There’s even the #avgeek hashtag and the FlyerTalk forum for those in the know.
So many times, my colleagues and I would discuss the fact that what really moves the needle for frequent travellers isn’t the fancy wine or comfy chairs (as undeniably nice as those are) but rather the expectation – borne out of the experience – that consistency is the norm. The thing that moves the needle for frequent travellers is knowing that when the inevitable issues arise – from lost luggage to cancelled flights, from last-minute flight changes to getting special treatment for family members when travelling together – an airline, cognizant of the not-inconsequential revenue that comes from these sorts of travellers, will just sort things out.
And that’s the stuff that has really shown itself to be missing of late. From 30-minute wait times to a call centre (despite being put through an identity check and the call centre recognising my status) to little niggles around selecting seats on a flight through to having to clarify on a seemingly weekly basis that my wife is, in fact, my wife and that, yes, she still retains her status that my own status grants.
Going back and reading what I’ve written, I acknowledge it sounds like entitlement. But the problem with treating important customers well is that they start to expect that they’ll continue to be treated well. It strikes me that even worse than treating customers badly is this kind of bait-and-switch, where you start by treating people well but then slowly, but inexorably, erode that service level.
It’s tough times for airlines and I’d hate to be running one myself. Given how tough it is, I would have thought that a small but impactful investment in treating one’s highest-spending customer consistently well would be a worthy investment, no? Meantime, equanimity is the order of the day, I guess.
