Smooth as….what?

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am the captain, I received a message that there is an object damage at the airport, not safe to land now”  …………silence…….

I have a chance to use the service of our honorable Thai national airline on my business trip two weeks ago. As usual, I do not expect any kind of service excellence, as I don’t think most staff in this airline know how to spell out “service”.
My on-ground experience does tell me what kind of service awaiting me on the flight.
While waiting at the gate, I ask one of the ground staff “excuse me, do you know is there any plug nearby that I can use, I like to work on my laptop. I try to find but could not find one”. The answer from a purple lady behind the counter is “just look around, if there is, it means there is. If there is none, it means there is none”……………………………alright.

Embarking on the flight, seeing the fake smiling face of cabin crew with the freezing “Wai” (a Thai greeting gesture) gesture with the welcome sentence of “Sawasdee ka, what is your seat number”, “36 H”, “straight on and turn right”….Most time, I don’t even like to answer anything, I know where to go but I try to be polite and respond her or him with my seat number with a smile. How cooperative I am as a passenger!!!
Walking towards my seat, again I find a freezing white face covered with thick make-up cabin crew look at me and stared at my heavy bags. She does not say a word, this time no smile. I put my bags on the overhead locker while she is watching me like an auditor. Before taking a seat, I ask for a blanket. She does not reply, walk away but does come back with a blanket. Until this moment, I still do not hear bit of her voice. I do receive the blanket but in a very quiet rude type of service, I consider.

This is very usual in airline or hotel robotic type of staff. Do they serve what you want? The answer is; yes. They just need to learn a little bit of “how to serve” which sounds like a very basic training, isn’t it? But believe it or not, they mostly fail on all those basic behaviors.

After all the robotic quiet services delivered by thick make-up un-smiley dummy cabin crew throughout, I look forward to arriving at the destination which I eagerly wait for the captain to announce “cabin crew, please be seated for landing”….but a little while later, the captain makes an announcement that; “Ladies and gentlemen, I am the captain, I received a message that there is an object damage at the airport, not safe to land now”……in a cold irresponsible voice…..….no further information we receive.
What an announcement – very unprofessional and uncaring captain. I am taught when I work for airline that we never scare passenger with gesture, with words or with any action when we are not sure of the situation.
To tell you more, the captain does translate his announcement into Thai. With that, all passengers are obviously nervous and look at one another with great fear.
I say to myself; “here we go, after the uptight feeling I have about all service received from ground staff, flight attendant and now such an announcement – what a team work on delivering bad service”.

Finally and surely, the captain does land safely; otherwise, my write-up will not appear here. Thank god but not the captain; he does scare everybody till death from the minute he makes the announcement to the time he brings the plane to ground.
Now let’s review the service motto for this honorable airline, the service is “smooth as …..what?”

© Tevabanchachai N. (2009), Honorary Advisor / Director, Mai-BS (THAILAND)
http://mai-bs.com

© Tevabanchachai N. (2009), Program Director at Travel Industry Management Division, Acting General Manager at Salaya Pavilion Hotel and Training Center at Mahidol University International College
http://www.mahidol.ac.th