I’ve just got back from Gran Canaria.
It was the holiday I’d been looking forward since the kids went back to school in January.
But even though the prospect of the holiday was exciting, I wasn’t looking forward to the Easyjet ‘bag drop’ at Gatwick.
The bag drop was brought in to save time, but up until this trip, my experience was that it did entirely the opposite.
This time we stayed in the Bloc Hotel right in the terminal building (I’d highly recommend it), and got up at the ungodly time of 4:15am to beat the masses to the bag drop.
Turns out we needn’t have bothered.
Since the last time I’d been there, Easyjet had improved the process. Considerably.
Just like your local Sainsbury’s, there are now a bunch of machines; not for ‘checking out’ your shopping, but ‘checking in’ your bags.
I was sure that it all looked too good to be true – I’ve heard the refrain ‘unknown item in bagging area’ one too many times – but after a few pressed buttons and about four minutes, the process was complete and we were heading through security and towards Garfunkel’s for breakfast (and copious amounts of strong coffee).
Needless to say, I’ll be travelling with Easyjet again.
There’s definitely a lesson here for all of us. By introducing these new machines, Easyjet have improved their customer experience without increasing their overhead.
In fact, they’ve probably reduced it.
Could you add something into your business that’d improve the process or the customer experience, without it costing you anything?
We’ve done this recently.
Lots of employers like talking to an actual person to resolve their staff issues, and we’re not going to change that.
But what we have done is developed a checklist for a successful disciplinary procedure, so our clients can ensure they’re doing the right thing, even if it’s outside of office hours. (Let’s face it, callers probably won’t get the best ‘customer service’ from me if I’m called unexpectedly at 10 o’clock at night!)
It works for us, and it works for our clients. Could you do something similar?
Nothing will replace speaking to a friendly, expert advisor, but there are always things that can make the client experience more user-friendly. Any ideas?