“The client is king” is one of my basic attitudes in life. That’s why, I’m constantly making my colleagues aware of this fact. In my opinion the client deserves client focused service since it’s thanks to them that we can buy bread an butter every day. Today I had to conclude once again that this is not common practice with some organizations. I tried to change a plane ticket at the WizzAir customer service.

First of all, I have to admit that it was my mistake. By accident I booked a ticket with twice the same name of one of my sons on it. And I skipped one son. A simple phone call should be sufficient. The reality turned out to be different. Changing the name of a passenger costs about € 50, even more than a new ticket! Are they crazy? I do not want to blame the people in the call center. Sorry that we got so angry towards you today. But I would like to blame the people who came up with those crazy scripts and procedures.

The reason why they request money for this change is the fact that they cannot check whether I want to exchange a person on the ticket or not. There could be someone else somewhere on this planet who is a child with the same name. Yeah, right! They requested me to send an email to the customer service. And then I received the following automatic reply:

Thank you for your letter sent to our Customer Relations Department.

Please note that due to a temporary resource problem it may be more than 30 days before we are able to answer your letter.

If your request is of an urgent nature (eg. if you need an answer before a flight date that is drawing close) or if you have a question or request regarding a specific reservation you are advised to call one of our Call Centre.

This temporary resource problem has already been lasting for more than a year. I am still waiting for two replies. I send those emails a year ago. Besides our travel date is before their reply due time.

The bottom line is that I just don’t understand why organisations act like this. In general I had a good opinion about WizzAir. The people on the plane really try to make that you have a good flight. But the customer (no) service manages to disturb this feeling within a split second.

WizzAir is obviously not the only organisation acting like this. In Poland I feel very often that people treat a client more like a problem than an opportunity. In Holland the average customer service is acceptable, but also there you can find a whole bunch of bad service examples. It seems that these organisations act like this to prevent abuse and I partly understand that. But please try to be client focused more than rule focused. Within a client focused organisation there is always space for some flexibility when it is clear that a client does not try to abuse your friendliness! And in this way you keep them happy!