On the road again

// September 4th, 2007 // customer-service, travel

Hi all,

I’m back on my way to fly to another destination today. The trip leads us to London, where Gartner is hosting the yearly summit on collaboration, portals and content management.

Portals, Collaboration and Content Management

For an innovator and technology scout as me, Gartner is one of those opportunities to discuss parts of our research and the outputs we’ve received in the contacts with our customers over the past months.

All organisations have increased needs when it comes to collaboration, portals and alike. Most companies still struggle to keep up with the rapid changes in these fields. We’ve been very successful over the past years in building practices with customers, to deliver added value in collaboration to their customers, and this conference is one of the many reflection points to ensure that we are still on track.

I participated to this same conference last year and had some good updates there, so it is clear that expectations are high. I’ll keep you posted here and in our customers’ community.

The delay

The trip itself started with a strong delay in Brussels. While I am writing this blog, our British Airways Airbus 320 is parked on an outside stand on Brussels International Airport. When the plane was pushed back and the crew tried to release the plane from the small vehicle that pushed us back, it turned out to be impossible to disconnect the plane from the pole that makes the connection.

The head of the cabin crew announced that the best way to live this delay was by opening the bar. So the crew is now busy serving us a drink. The pilot announced that the engineers brought in the big hammers and it turns out that, if flight control is not dramatically changing our flight pattern, we will get to London with a little over an hour of delay.

It was a relief to be updated by the crew in such a consistent manner. We had an update from the flight deck on the status, planned actions and consequences to our timing. In the (literally) hundreds of thousands of air miles this year and the associated delays, this one could serve as an example to many other airline companies. To complete a tma (tutor marked assignment) for my MBA, I was looking for an example in customer service and see… delivered. (Dear people at BA, don’t see this as an invitation to have me live any more delays, even if I appreciate the care-taking)

I’ll enjoy my free drink, sit back and hope that I’ll be soon enjoying the journey!

Koen

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