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Good/Bad Customer service and it's effect

Scenario 1 : I am waiting in line to check in my baggage for an international United airlines flight. A couple in front of me is trying to check-in their baggage. There is some conversation going on between the agent and the couple regd the weight of their baggage. While the conversation is going on, the agent decides to check in the couple baggage and puts it on the conveyor belt..And here is what happens next

Agent : Ma’am, one of your baggage weighed 69.5 lbs and the other 70 lbs, the extra charge is $150. We charge $50 for baggage exceeding 50lbs and up to 70 lbs, and $100 for baggage exceeding 70 lbs and up to 100lbs.

Couple : !!!%^%&&^.. Ma’am, the second baggage is only 70 lbs, why are you chraging $100.

Agent (in a nasal tone) : Ma’am, the rule says 70 lbs and above.

Couple (intimidated) : Yeah, but is it only 0.5 lbs more than the first one and up to 70 lbs is only $50 right?

Agent (in I make the rules tone) : Ma’am, I am not going to argue over this.. It  is $100 for 70 lbs and more.. period.

Couple (nearly in tears) : OK, can we at least take out the 0.5 lbs of weight form the baggage so that we don’t have to pay $100 for it?

Agent (in you dare to speak back to me tone) : Ma’am.. the baggage is already checked in, you cannot take the weight out, you have to pay $100
…
…
..
Couple end up paying $100 because one of their bags was 0.5 lbs extra!!!

Does anyone find this sad? I understand the need to put limits and charge for excess baggage. But shouldn’t the agent have used common sense and made the call not to charge the couple $100 for 0.5 lbs!!! This is a good case of where employee stick to rules and are not given the freedom to make meaningful judgments.. Read Joel Spolsky‘s article about his recent experience at Starbucks and his reaction to understand what I mean :). No wonder United is in a death spiral!! 🙂

Scenario 2 : My second leg of the international trip was on a Lufthansa flight. There was a strike by the ground crew in Frankfurt and Lufthansa couldn’t get the required food into the flight. And here is how the crew handled the issue

  1. Made multiple announcements prior to the boarding that only 1 meal would be served in the journey and that special meal requests cannot be fulfilled.
  2. Provided vouchers to customer to get food from the airport vendors if required.
  3. Make multiple announcements in the flight (pilot, head air hostess and individual air hostesses) and apologized for the inconvenience.
  4. Apologize while serving the first meal and again when we were getting off the flight..

I don’t remember a single passenger complaining about the lack of the “second” meal. And I will fly Lufthansa again, despite this issue. the lesson here is not to apologize multiple times, but how all the crew in the flight (ground crew, flying staff, serving staff) were informed of the issue and ensured that they provided the customers with an alternative and followed up on the issue..

Disclaimer : The united agent, might be an exception or might have been having a bad day..but somehow I sense the issue is bigger than that :)..

August 19, 2008 by Rantings Travel Uncategorized 4

HOW TO : Clear saved username/passwords in Windows

I came to know this method, when I saw one of the IT techs use it to troubleshoot some Internet connectivity issues.

To clear any saved username/passwords (i.e. Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer etc) in Microsoft Windows, do the following

  • Click Start –> Run, and type in control keymgr.dll
  • Delete any entries you want to from the list
  • Click on close

I tried this on Windows XP and Vista.

August 13, 2008 by HOWTO Technology Uncategorized Windows 0

Week 8 training..

I am in India, on a business trip and haven’t been able to catch up on my mid week runs. Had to settle for a 7 mile run for the long run too. For those that have travelled to India, I am sure you will understand, when I say that India is not the most frendliest place for runners :).. This is in spite of the media attention on the 3 year kid that completed a marathon :)..

August 3, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Running Sports Uncategorized 0

Poem : I'll show you the moonlight

My friend, Hafsa, shared this poem with me and I thought more people would enjoy it..

I’ll show you the moonlight but not the moon, the scene but not the crime.
I’ll show you the footprints but not the feet, the ore but not the mine.
I’ll tell you the story but not what it means. That’s for you to define.
I’ll give you the words and the pictures. But the rest of it is mine.

–Poem by McNeney

August 1, 2008 by Fun Uncategorized 0

Week 7 training..

Chart of my week7 training for the marathon. I did better with mid week runs and also improved on my speed. I ran with the 11 min/mile pace group and was feeling really good after the weekend 12 mile run. Think, it is time to move up to 10:30 :)..

July 29, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Running Uncategorized 0

Get it while you can..

Thomas Friedman, author of “The world is Flat“, is giving away an audio version of the book until August 4th for free!!

You can register for the giveaway here (http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/giveaway)
or you can go to this link and download the MP3 directly (http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/pop/giveaway/)

The world is flat, an international best seller, describes the authors notion of how we he sees the world becoming a level playing field due to 10 “flatteners”. Regardless of which field you are in, I would highly recommend reading this book, to understand the new world we live in now..

July 28, 2008 by Management Uncategorized 0

HOW TO : Configure JBoss to follow symbolic links

Jboss, in addition to being an application server also serves static content. We recently ran into an issue where some static content was not displayed when users hit the link. The JBoss server kept spewing 404 errors, stating that the content was not found. On some hair pulling research, we figured out that JBoss, like Apache, does not follow/allow content mapped to a symbolic link.

So for example in your web app, you added a sym link to another directory, where most of your content is stored, Jboss would not show the content, when you go to the link.

Here’s a quick guide to fix this.

  1. Go to the deploy folder of the context you want to configure. For example, if you used the default context, you go to $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/deploy/jboss-web.deployer
  2. Edit the context.xml file and add allowLinking=”true” in the Context (NOTE : This allows Jboss to publish symbolic links on all apps in your application server, if you want to restrict it to just one particular app, you have to edit the context.xml in your specific application folder). Upon adding the option, our context.xml file looked as such



   

   
   org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.RunAsListener

More information on options for the context.xml can be found here

http://www.jboss.org/file-access/default/members/jbossweb/freezone/docs/2.1.0/config/context.html

For the record, Jboss configuration and accompanying documentation is what I call black magic :).. Too many options, too many ways to do the same thing.

July 25, 2008 by HOWTO Linux Programming Technology Uncategorized Web 3

$1550 more to go!!

I raised $250 out of the $1800 I pledged for Asha, without sending a single e-mail or making a single phone call!! By just adding a signature in my e-mail with the link to my 2008 marathon training.

Thx Sis, Hafsa and Sudheer anna.. Thx for supporting the cause of educating poor kids guys.

July 24, 2008 by Family Fun Rantings Uncategorized 0