What happened to customer service
My sister was up from Cape Town yesterday on some business. I got to have lunch with her, and then took her to the airport in the evening. Due to an incredibly light traffic route, we got to the airport at 5, quite a bit earlier than planned so we tried to get her onto an earlier flight, hers was at 8:30 I believe.
So we queued at the SAA ticket sales and reservations desk. After a while with the queue barely moving, I stayed there while my sister went to the Voyager desk to see if she could use her voyager status to arrange the earlier flight. She couldn’t. It was over an hour later when we got served. There were maybe 15 people in front of us, and 4 people working the desk, eventually we got served by a new arrival to the desk.
My sister had to go and sort out something at the check in counters as part of the process, so I stayed there at the counter to keep our spot looking busy. Now one woman came up and decided she could just supersede me and started trying to speak to the guy. He said he was busy and directed her to the queue she had not noticed and jsut dodged entirely.
That’s fairly unremarkable, but then he turned to me and said “She should take off her dark glasses, she might see then,stupid.” We also received nothing in the way of an apology or explanation for the time it took, as well as the fact another ten staff members could have been working at the desk.
Customer service? Is that something SAA have even heard of? Delays happen, but a chronically understaffed desk is not acceptable, neither is one of the staff making snide comments about other customers. I’ve flown on many airlines, as has my sister, and we have never experienced anything like this from any of the other airlines. Even Kulula and 1Time with their budget flights offer better service. It’s no wonder SAA struggle, other than incompetent management, things like this push people away from them and influence other customers away. As a result of this, I wont be eager to use SAA again, I’d rather give my business to Kulula or BA. And I’d recommend others avoid them too.
Tags: Customer Service, SAA, Ticketing, Voyager
