Standing out from the crowd
Last night saw the latest event held by CIMTIG in London. The debate was centred around the subject of customer loyalty in the travel industry and how travel companies can create loyaly to their brands. Four speakers (Francesca Ecsery from Cheapflights UK, Tom Marchant from Black Tomato, Steven Georgiadis from SAS and Crispin Westhead from Which?) each spoke about their businesses and about why lifetime loyalty is a critical objective of their marketing strategy.
The audience listened as the speakers shared their desires to understand their customers’ needs on a deeper level, to offer those all-important extra touches, to show the customer that they can add value in so many more ways than the customer might have previously known. These tactics would help to engender a sense of trust, of affinity, of likeability and of peace of mind that would keep the customer coming back for more.
I listened to this and had a growing doubt running through my head: what if I don’t want these things from my travel company? What if I don’t want them to waste their time (at my expense ultimately) trying to understand me? I recalled my recent visit to a local travel shop to book our flights to central America. I would normally have bought the tickets online, but a quirk in our specific requirements meant I had a choice of phoning the BA sales team or walking 2 minutes to the local Flight Centre; I chose the latter. I knew the airline/flight number/times that I wanted and what price I was willing to pay, and I just wanted it done with the minimum fuss. The sales advisor duly obliged and job was done in around 5 minutes. It was purely transactional exchange, and that suited me perfectly.
As last night’s debate inevitably swung around to Mr O’Leary’s customer service philosophy at Ryanair, I wondered whether everybody’s favourite airline boss actually had a point. Perhaps his apparent total disregard for customer experience was a response to tapping in to the wishes of the millions who choose to travel with him: that they don’t want their data collected and segmented with the latest marketing tools; that they don’t want to receive birthday greetings, welcome home gifts or carefully tailored attention. Perhaps they are only interested in getting to their destination with the least amount of fuss, and they are actually very comfortable with the lack of ‘customer love’ they might be shown by the Ryanair staff they meet along with way. Like me in the Flight Shop, they are purchasing a product and not an experience, and so don’t want all the whistles and bells that others might try to attach.
But then I sat on my First Capital Connect train home and wondered about the brand of that train company: hated by almost everyone I hear speaking about it, yet it is surely the ultimate transactional exchange. A 20 minute journey into London should not evoke any strong feelings one way or the other, yet ask anyone from St Albans about the trains and they’ll have plenty to say.
Maybe it’s the same with Ryanair. They too have millions of people talking about them, and while the horror stories are relatively few, the thousands of low level grumbles are often met with a thought of ‘well I’m prepared to put up with that to get to Ljubljana for a tenner’. Their brand, and the base of their loyalty, has perversely grown out of their ‘you get what you pay for’ approach; one that appears no mere accident if the behaviour of the main man is anything to go by. There are those (millions) of customers who do respond to the careful and professional care that the panelists described (they probably never fly with Ryanair), while there are a signficant number of others who, in the same situation, do not actually want that relationship with their travel company.
The view of the panel at the end of a good debate was that if Mr O’Leary had been sitting in on the debate he wouldn’t never have bought into the concept of lifetime loyalty. On the other hand I was left to wonder whether in fact he has embraced the concept and adapted it to something that works for him, while in the process making it unrecognisable to the rest of us.
I attended the evening as a guest of CIMTIG
Of course, the main difference between Ryanair and FCC is that Ryanair have pitched it as a bargain – “Yes, we don’t have any customer service, but you’re flying for £50 each way, what do you expect?”. Which seems a much better bargain than paying £30-or-so for a cattle-class train between London and St. Albans
Spot on. I can’t stand these companies that want to know my habits, be my portal to the world or make me wade through acres of banner ads and animation in order to get to the point. Google (in the early days at least) had it right: blank screen, blinking cursor in a box, tell me what you want. Ryanair too.
It all changed when we stopped being passengers and started being “customers” – a sign of corporate culture changing utterly sometime around the late 80s/early 90s, if memory serves. Hateful. Very hard to see the way out now.
As a weekly flyer in Europe, I have to say I do appreciate a level of customer service attached to my journey. If I book a train ticket I expect the train to run on time most of the time and I expect value for money FCC does not in my opinion give that, though they are getting better with newer trains, I use the Gatwick Express as it is more reliable that FCC.
The same applies to the yellow and blue airline, they are not cheap, I did not mind putting up with a bus service when I paid bus service prices, but now they are charging a lot more than 2 years ago, and for the same price British Airways provide a much better experience, which is just as reliable as Ryanair (Mr O’Leary’s USP), and because it is scheduled service I do not have the continuous worry of wether the flight will be running after the next timetable change.
I’ll leave Ryanair to carry the one off travellers who can search out the bargain trip at weird times, but as a regular traveller I will stick, for the time being at least, with my scheduled flights especially as they are selling them much closer to Ryanair prices these days.
Thanks for the comments and for sharing your experiences. Would be a novelty if someone came on and defended FCC?
Matthew, your point about the move from passengers to customers is at the heart of this. There is perhaps an assumption that thinking of us as customers will automatically lead to a better relationship, more long-term thinking and an improved all-round experience. But what if, as you suggest, all we want from that plane/train/travel company is to get from A to B without any of the fuss? How does that fit into the new world of marketing? Because as those basic out-dated thoughts are left further and further behind, so too are the basic needs of a sizeable contingent of the general public.
Andy, I think your analysis of Ryanair’s business model is correct. An aircraft is essentially a fast, flying bus and attentive staff fussing over you and plying you with free drinks for a premium price does not escape that fact. Perhaps that description is dramatic?
Then so also is the term “cattle class” or at the other extreme “jet set”. They are all terms used to sell a product by running down the opposition or making a product sound exclusive. We are a society heavily influenced by the marketing departments of big companies, including Ryanair’s.
The latest social media driven internet is also a marketing ploy that is even more intrusive, in that it analyses behaviours in order to pitch to individuals. Ryanair also uses social media, by releasing their “outrageous” plans to trim costs. These get more than their fair share of discussion on the likes of Twitter, Facebook et al.
The discussion on FCC is also interesting, as I looked up ticket prices to London and find that a one way ticket is £9.30. A Ryanair flight can be anything between £1 and a few hundred pounds but you rarely hear of anyone quoting the top figure for the price of a seat. But is that £1 / £50 / £300 for a flight a bargain? You certainly get a bigger carbon footprint for each £1 than if spent on FCC.
You’re right John, Ryanair’s use of social media is quite different to their competitors but it doesn’t make it ineffective. Every time MOL makes a comment about charging for toilets he gets so much attention – he knows what he’s doing for sure. He might be sending out the message that it’s all about cost for him, but then isn’t that what it’s all about for those who choose to fly with Ryanair – getting from point to point with no whistles and bells.
FCC is I guess another topic (you might get a £9 fare off peak but if you’re going to your office in the West End at peak time you’ll be paying £23 – that’s when the anger boils up quickly). Their mismanagement of constant problems over the last 18 months has left people crying for their franchise to be withdrawn.