I work with numbers for a living. From morning to night, I am in front of my computer — integers, formulas, equations — a backup calculator by my side. People make important decisions based on my analysis and, by and large, I do a good job. But I have been doing this for 15 years now, day in and day out, taking a break only for my annual vacation. And the other day, I got a formula wrong and, unfortunately, some customers made some wrong transactions and went through a fair amount of inconvenience. No major financial loss to anyone and it was one wrong formula out of the hundreds that I calculate daily but it did hassle our clients. Then, all hell broke loose — someone reported this to the press and my company was prominently displayed in all the leading dailies. Why, some international publications picked it up as well from the newswires. Our call centre was flooded with irate calls. Friends and family called me to ask what had happened. Someone clicked a photograph of me at my cubicle and pasted posters all around the neighbourhood. It was quite horrible.

The above situation is fictional — it would be quite extraordinary if something like that were to really happen to someone doing a desk job. But every now and then, a bad customer experience story, particularly in the aviation industry, goes viral. An airline diverts a flight and doesn’t take adequate care of the passengers. A flight is delayed but this isn’t communicated clearly. Or an employee snaps at a passenger. We all read these stories, identify with them and propagate them, through word of mouth and, now, social media. Facebook posts go viral, tweets get re-tweeted, and entire organisations are brought to their knees as the PR departments struggle to contain the effects of an incident spiralling out of control.

This level of customer empowerment is fantastic. No longer can corporate behemoths take us for granted. We are a generation of consumers that demands instant gratification. We take instant action if our expectations are not met — we are the court, the judge and the jury rolled into one. We hold our service providers and our brands to a much higher standard than consumers ever did.

What I am concerned about is the lack of tolerance that we occasionally display to individual employees who are representing the organisation or brand. Take the case of airline employees — whether in the cabin or ground staff, this has to be one of the most thankless jobs. Imagine dealing with hundreds and thousands of stressed passengers day after day. Handling logistics, queries, missed flights, cancelled flights, gate changes, special meal requests, weather problems, technical snags — most issues usually beyond their control. They are invariably the messengers, communicating issues to customers, who are already in a heightened state of stress. But every once in a while you will come across a group of passengers crowded around a hapless employee, yelling at the top of their voices, virtually accosting him or her. The viral Facebook post lambasting an airline is usually accompanied with a surreptitiously clicked photograph of the said airline representative who was rude or inconsiderate. Yes, they may have been, but is it fair to intrude and leak their photographs or personal information?

It’s quasi-hypocritical, coming from someone who has written a book poking fun at the aviation industry, but all said and done, it is an extremely difficult job. While we rightfully hold airlines to the highest standards of customer service, I think we often exhibit much less tolerance than we should to their employees. I appreciate that they are the custodians of the company but they are individuals too. With similar boundaries of privacy as a professional who works in front of a computer, away from customers. It would be a lot more human to remember that anyone can have a bad day at work.

(rishi piparaiya is the author of Aisle Be Damned rishi@aislebedamned. com )

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