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Support is useless unless they're empowered.

I’m in terminal 36 at Miami International Airport and having a terribly frustrating experience with American Airlines. I’ve decided to vent some frustration by writing blog posts about my observations.

The Setup

Our flights have been canceled twice, we’ve even taken off and in the air turned around and came back to the Miami airport. We’ve been in this terminal for eight hours. American Airline support cannot offer any help only an “I’m sorry” and their twitter account only flaunts their ignorant by telling us to call customer support.

Support is useless unless they’re empowered.

A support person that can’t help is useless and only an object to vent your frustrations to. They should be able to help the customer’s situation, easing their pain. It’s pointless and even more frustrating to the customer to get a response from a support person that offers no help. I feel patronized. Am I stupid? Does your “I’m sorry” really help me?

How American Airline could have helped

Have someone walking around the terminal with bottles of water. Have someone giving out hot towels. If you can’t fix my problem give me something to ease my pain for 30 seconds.

It’s a Simple Concept, So Why Don’t More Companies Do This?

• Most business owners don’t know how to change their business for the better.
• Most business owners think it’s cheaper and easier to hire another few apologetic support staff members than it is to hire a radical that can come in and implement major changes—possibly improving their business/service.
• Most business owners don’t know how (or are scared) to hire a person that can make a difference. Change can be scary. Hiring a radical means listening to someone else criticize your status quo.
• Most business owners spend their time appeasing customers and employees, not empowering them.
  No one wants to work for a company that has upset customers. It’s hard to empower an employee that feels this kind of negativity. People want to work for a company where the customers love them. If you care about your employees, you’ll put them in a situation to make wins for your company.

How We Implemented This…

We recently hired two experienced bookkeepers to provide support for LessAccounting. Now, if a user on LessAccounting has a problem with their books, we’ll jump in and help them crunch numbers. In the process, we’ll teach them simple book-keeping practices. Chris Johnson, a LessAccounting customer, tweeted: “LessAccounting has my back.” We’re trying to eliminate the frustration of doing your own bookkeeping.

Please do this.

Consider taking the money you normally spend on support and allocating it into making your product/service just better. Pour money into being awesome, and you won’t need so many people to answer the phone saying, “I’m sorry” all day.

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