Management Organizations and Customer Service

Sometime back I talked about a restaurant in Jinja where we were mistreated at as customers who wanted to eat something in the night. However, there are times when people are good intentioned but it just doesn’t work. Arriving at Addis Ababa at about 6am in the morning, there was a challenge. I shouldn’t say I was shocked but here was a man sleeping of the transfer desk! Of course with modern technology you are always looking at the screen to see where to go. So we left the man enjoying his sleep and we proceeded to the waiting lounges. As a frequent traveller, I have accessed some private lounges and I had access to the cloud 9 Ethiopian lounge. I have been to this lounge before and other than the free meals may be you should keep away from it. The lounge is visited by very large numbers of people; there are only two computers for internet access…Whenever I am there, either one of them is off or both. Luckily there is wireless so if you have a laptop you just get connected. What continues to amaze me is management organization of the customer service. It seems nobody cares about what takes place. There is no order about seats and you are all fighting for these seats as well. It is also said when there is no competition the customer will always get a raw deal. That is what you get when you get to this lounge. I guess because of the monopoly of the Ethiopian airlines at their airport, customer service is not a priority. As we boarded the plane, again the issue of organization showed up quickly. When they announced the flight, everybody went to the desk. There was no action for some 10 mins until when some sensible person told passengers to make a line. That is organization for you. If you are in business, please pick a lesson.