Ryan air do it again: how to annoy customers and get away with it
So, my least favourite airline Ryan Air has once again done a dirty on consumers. This time, mulling over a charge for the use of toilets. What has always interested me about this company is its full on refusal to put the customer first in any way other than charging low prices for travel. Another interest I have with it is that customers put up with it and I blame the airline industries approach of lowest cost always wins. When companies put cost first and not the experience they are in my humble opinion bound to loose at some stage. I learned that around the age of 30 a personal transformation was made in the way I viewed the experience of travel. I was prepared to pay more for instance for a couple of 'free' Gin and Tonics on a British flight than I was a $100 cheaper flight by an American carrier. It was a simple protest vote that hurt no one but my bank balance at the end of the day, but it also felt good to put my money where my mouth is (literally in this case). Ryan Air has always treated customers with contempt – the CEO gets away with comments such as those he made a couple of years ago after cutting a number of flights to France. When asked how he felt about those Brits who had bought holiday homes near the airports he once served he basically said he didnt feel sorry for them. How nice. So, the issue is at what point do customers say enough and move on to other carriers? Another recent example saw me stuck at JFK waiting to board a jet Blue flight home to Rochester. The cue was ridiculous, the stress it afforded me was also ridiculous. The outcome? I will not fly Jet Blue again and I blog about how awful that experience was. So, marketing angle – focusing on the customer experience has always been and will always be the best way to ultimate satisfaction with a company's service. Low price is great, but if it means you have to pay £1 for the use of the toilet, then I think there's something pretty wrong with the philosophy of the company. It bring a whole new angle to the old saying, 'you should have gone before we got going.'
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Welcome to the world of Commodity vs Value. Each company has to choose one or the other – the ones failing are the ones that try to do both. I think it’s interesting that the UK has both ends of the spectrum, and far less in between those ends than we do. You look at Virgin Air which is all about luxury transportation and RyanAir which is all about treating customers like cows while giving them little or no service, but having great prices.
Way back in 2001 I heard a great speaker (can’t remember the name) who was talking on this topic, and it changed the way I do business. He said that with the internet in place it would polarize the world from a Commodity/Value proposition. And that has come true in the last 8 years. People shopping on the internet either go for the value model (Amazon, Expedia, etc.) where they know they might not be paying the lowest price but the convenience and service makes it worth it, or they go for the commodity model (craig’s list/ebay/priceline) where they sacrifice service and convenience to get the best price. There is less and less “in between” those models.
As such there is room in the market for both, and woe for those who try to hover in the middle. The commodity consumers will ignore their paltry attempts to gain market share, and the value shoppers will poo-poo their “average” service and value.
Also, please note – RyanAir is CONSIDERING the addition of pay toilets. Look at the huge amount of publicity they’ve gotten (for good or ill) – 2 weeks ago I’d never heard of RyanAir – in the last 2 weeks I’ve seen them mentioned in the news, blogosphere, etc. many times. This sort of thing is a slam-dunk for getting publicity and not all publicity is bad
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My thoughts anyway.
youre quite right Lee –
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/BusinessTravel/Story?id=4262149&page=1