When tech outsmarts service
2024, the year of customer service transformation, threw me a curveball on my recent trip to Spain. Full of celebration, good food and some customer service adventures.
My biggest takeaway? The real hero wasn't the airline, the hotel, or even their customer service—it was AirTags. When traditional service fails, sometimes it's the simplest technology that saves the day. From my experience came an important insight: whereas many airlines and hotels often invest in expensive systems and call center quality assurance practices, they usually miss the integration piece during implementation. So what happens? There is a lack of downstream communication between systems and people during the real-time touchpoints of customer needs. But let me start from the beginning; here's what happened.
Travel woes from the get go
Three couples (among them my husband and I) embarked on the journey to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in very high spirits. We were set to bike around 250 miles to Portugal. However, it wasn't long before a series of challenges bested us. One couple spent the first two days wrestling with missing luggage that included their biking gear. Numerous calls to the airline were met with local language barriers and ineffective service that caused even more frustration. What finally saved them were AirTags, which allowed them to track their bags on an unscheduled detour to Santiago, Chile, instead of Santiago de Compostela. It became a running joke throughout the trip - where was the luggage, and who had AirTags and could check?
What transpired during these calls brings to light a massive gap in call center best practices: Solutions not focused on customer needs compounded by language barriers. This call center could have been optimized with better training and technology to incorporate language support tools that would turn what was otherwise a very frustrating experience into one that was…less so. An even better solution would have been a commitment to delivering luggage as soon as possible (acknowledging that the bags went halfway around the world and had quite a time catching up to us on our bikes.
My husband and I looked on at these mishaps and sighed with relief - we still had our luggage…for the time being.
Flying home: a test of patience
On our way back from Porto, Portugal, we had to make a very tight connection in Madrid. It was a terminal sprint, but we made the flight with minutes to spare. We made a joke of “will our bags make the flight, or won’t they?” Once we landed, it only took us an hour at baggage claim and a trip to airport customer service to learn information that the service desk had readily available: our bags did not make the flight.
Here’s another example of an issue with a wider implication: airline call centers and contact centers typically have information but don’t have processes to convey them. With a contact center optimization approach, customer-facing representatives would have up-to-the-minute information regarding flight and baggage updates that could have texted or emailed us immediately. Indeed some U.S. airlines have pieces of this. Unfortunately for us, the airline we flew did not. It would be much better for them to proactively inform travelers, long before frustration sets in.
Customer service: good intentions, poor execution
It took a dozen calls or so to get through to the airline’s baggage service. The agents were friendly and sympathetic and said all the right things. In 2010, this would have been considered top-class service. And in 2024, the agents were doing and saying the right thing. The process was the problem. They filed claims and sent messages, but nothing changed. Our luggage was stuck in Madrid, and then in our home airport of Chicago - with no one willing to deliver it to us in a timely fashion.
It wasn't the people. It was the system they worked in: outdated, fragmented, unresponsive. This experience underlines the fact that even with the best practices of call center quality assurance, without integrated systems serving agents with the right information at any given time, customer service will come up short. It's not just about teaching agents customer empathy but also about arming them with the tools that enable them to take some of that information and turn that into efficiency by resolving issues.
What didn't break
Not every piece of service failed. We were biking with a travel company in some relatively rural parts of Galicia, Spain, and northeastern Portugal Our travel company, and especially our guides, faultlessly managed our dietary restrictions - a feat that left me genuinely impressed, as this is something that rarely happens and confirmed that when tech and process come together, great service can happen.
Such experiences were very much the exception rather than the rule. So while I often prefer my vacations to be a vacation from all things call center, this one had me thinking. The best tool on our trip, hands down, was AirTags: simple, functional, and a reflection of what's still sorely lacking in today's servicescape. They’re the backup plan that you hope you never need, but if you do need them, the information is under your control.
It follows that, in the case where optimization of contact centers is linked to clear communication and system integration, customers will be serviced at a level that engenders trust and satisfaction. The investment in aligned systems, training, and strategic planning can bridge the gap in service intent and successful customer outcomes. And make it so that customers don’t have to track everything you do because they trust you to deliver.
At Blue Orbit Consulting, we specialize in helping organizations navigate these complexities. Whether you’re rolling out a new platform, integrating new capabilities, or just trying to keep your existing technology running smoothly, we’re here to help. Let’s work together to create a support model that keeps your contact center operating at peak performance.
If any of this resonates with you or your organization, take a moment to share this newsletter with your colleagues who may be struggling with similar challenges. Blue Orbit Consulting guides you through methods that will transform your contact center’s operations into a world-class customer experience.
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I founded Blue Orbit Consulting in 2014 after running staff organizations in contact centers and building consulting practices in customer service, process improvement, complex program management, and channel operations. My approach – and my firm’s approach – is fundamentally pragmatic, and our clients often achieve benefits in excess of 10x their investment. We develop and deliver world-class customer interactions for our clients, whether it is troubleshooting and optimizing what they already have in place or creating strategic transformations to deliver outstanding customer interactions every time.