Spirit Airlines Addresses Customer Complaints
Is the goal of customer management to all at once be everything to all customers? Or is it to consistently deliver on the specific promise a business makes to its specific customer base?
Believing the answer to be the latter, Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza declares that his organization will not radically change the practices or business philosophies for which it is best known in the wake of a story about its high level of customer complaints.
“There is one thing we won’t do – add costs for things that most customers don’t value as much as our low fares just to reduce the complaints of a few customers,” writes Baldanza in a letter to Dallas News. “Doing that would raise prices for everyone, compromising our commitment to what our customers have continuously told us they truly value– the lowest possible price.”
While Baldanza does not believe his organization’s Department of Transportation reported complaint level of 8 per 100,000 customers is high, he does acknowledge it exceeds the industry’s average of 1-2 complaints per hundred thousand fliers. Insofar as that is true, he confirms his organization is “still not satisfied” with its success in managing complaint levels (Spirit complaints fell to 5/100,000 customers over the past few months.
Despite wanting to do better, Baldanza nonetheless identifies a fundamental barrier to that improvement: “Customers are surprised by our unbundled, a la carte model and that creates some complaints.”
Baldanza’s sentiment echoes that of Call Center IQ’s recent article on Spirit Airlines. Failing to appreciate the difference between service and customer service, Spirit Airlines travelers treat the organization’s barebones offering as proof of a poor commitment to the customer.
“Offering our low fares requires doing some things that some people complain about – more seats on our planes with a little less legroom, no Wi-Fi or video screens, and no refunds without insurance; however, these reduce costs which gives our customers the lowest fares in the industry,” explains Baldanza.
But instead of evaluating Spirit’s performance within that established framework—one that accepts a trade-off between amenities and travel cost—a segment of customers instead dwells specifically on Spirit’s comparative lack of amenities.
“We know some customers are surprised by our unbundled, a la carte model and that creates some complaints,” admits Baldanza.
That airlines like JetBlue offer more in-flightservices, they contend, is proof that it offers better customer servicethan Spirit Airlines. It is proof that JetBlue is a more customer-centric organization.
Spirit, however, banks on its customers adopting a different approach. It hopes customers will focus not on the services they are not receiving but on the valuable cost savings and safe, reliable flights that they are.
Most Spirit customers accept that mode of evaluation.
“We care about every one of our customers and work hard to deliver what they value most: safe, reliable transportation to where they want to go at a lower cost than other airlines,” writes Baldanza. “That’s because we know that the #1 thing that makes our customers happy is getting where they want to go for less.
“Judging by the number of customers on our planes and repeat customer rate, most people like this tradeoff.”
Aware that some customers are unprepared for the trade-off between amenities and price point, Spirit is committed to both educating its customers on “how to fly Spirit” and improving operational reliability to assure the core of its service—getting customers to where they need to go—is competitive with all other airlines.
Insofar as many travelers book through third-party websites and agencies rather than the airlines themselves, they might not fully appreciate the experience to which they are agreeing when flying Spirit. When an Expedia user pulls up a list of available flights, all he sees are travel times and price. While he probably shouldassume Spirit’s significant cheaper fares come with a catch, he might not expect the airline’s services to be markedly different from the ones he usually receives.
Spirit’s emphasis on market education is, therefore, not unwarranted. No one, meanwhile, would dare complain about an airline seeking to improve the safety and reliability of its practices.
But insofar as most fly Spirit precisely because of the trade-off between cost and amenities, changing the service offering to better contend with that offered by the rest of the industry would be both unwarranted and desirable. Spirit is built to service a particular customer—a customer that would rather fly cheaply than luxuriously. Abandoning that model—and thus the customer relationships it helped to cultivate—would be far less customer-centric than simply admitting Spirit Airlines is not for everyone.
That is the heart of customer experience management. While businesses must work to assure they never lose customers as a result of broken promises or poor customer service, they should not fear losing some potential customers in order to best deliver for their target audience.
Spirit Airlines is irrefutably the best status quo option for the type of customer that recognizes, appreciates and values the trade-off between cost and service offering. It has a clear competitive advantage within the market for inexpensive, hassle-free flights.
If it were to expand its amenities while simultaneously increasing flight costs, it would undermine that competitive advantage. It would destroy its appeal with the target audience.
And it would do so without any assurance that it would or even could dominate the overall flight market.
When interacting with customers, absolutely fear telling a customer “no” when he expects you to make good on a promise or commitment.
Never fear telling a customer “that is not who we are” if what he is requesting would undermine the foundation of your relationship with your customer base.
