Service Design

Consistency of service across partners

When a partner doesn’t deliver the same level of service your business can suffer as a result... My recent experience with booking a long haul flight to London with Air New Zealand and finding myself on sub 'Air New Zealand standard' partner flights between the US and London set my resolve to not fly with Air New Zealand again on a long haul route to UK or Europe.

There was nothing actually wrong with Air New Zealand itself and the experience on board their planes was good as usual. However I had paid ‘Air New Zealand’ prices and having booked with them I expected their level of customer experience across the whole journey. Unfortunately for them, their partners really let them down and I came away feeling disappointed and dissatisfied with Air New Zealand.

It may seem illogical that I should feel disappointed with Air New Zealand for their partners’ shortcomings, but when I think back across the entire experience from planning, to booking, to flying, I realised my disappointment stems from the fact that when booking the tickets, the Air New Zealand holiday shop agent didn’t inform me that I wouldn’t be flying with them the whole way. As a result my expectations were incorrectly set and I was also denied an opportunity to choose a different route to London where I would’ve been flying Air New Zealand the whole way.

When thinking about service design, it’s well worth considering beyond your own services and scrutinising partner or flow on services in order to understand the full picture for customers and mitigate any potential issues they may experience that could reflect negatively on your business.