Stop trying to delight your customer
It was a pleasant Saturday evening and I was heading back to Bangalore via Indigo Airlines in their ATR. The flight was fully occupied and the pilot informed us of a slight delay due to some luggage constraints. After couple of minutes he appreciated the ground staff in resolving the issue and headed to take off. I was busy catching up on the latest season of Stranger Things ( P.S. The show keeps getting better :p ) and happily ignored the incident.
Mid-flight I got a snack and a drink which I suppose is part of their corporate travel program. The snack box had this pun “Nut Case” written on it which left a slight grin on my face.
Indigo just tried to make my travel delightful! Now were they successful ? This is something I’d figure out soon. I thought of it for less than a minute and resumed the episode I was watching with barely any clue on what they had in stock for me.
The flight landed on time and I headed to the baggage claiming area. After a while of waiting with no sign of my check-in baggage I reached out to an Airline staff. To my shock, I was informed that my baggage was amongst the ones left at the departing airport due to capacity constraints in the aircraft. It just hit me how the ground staff “resolved” the capacity issue so quickly.
I managed to get my luggage delivered the next day after tons of phone calls. But this incident had me thinking on how Indigo got the basic requirement of an air travel wrong and tried to literally bribe me with snacks.
Kano Model is probably a framework the Airline should apply to decide on when they should consider provide excitement features to their customers.
Kano Model buckets features into basic, performance and excitement features.
Basic : These are features that are expected by the customer and not having them would lead to dissatisfaction. This would be the on-time baggage claiming in our case.
Performance : These are point of parity between competitors and having these can push customers to choose your product. They increase customer satisfaction proportionately.
Excitement : These are features which the customers do not expect and can provide a delightful experience, but they would not miss its absence. This would be the complimentary snacks and beverages in the scenario discussed.
As per the Kano Model Map unless Indigo takes off from being in the 3rd quadrant at present in-terms of basic features , providing a delightful feature would be of little value.
Indigo has around 57% of the market share today amongst the low-cost carriers. History has proven that the highly volatile airline industry can dethrone any big player and Indigo would need to bare this in mind if they wish to maintain their spot.
Should a low-cost carrier focusing on the mass segment care to delight its customer ever with such gimmicks is a question we should probably ponder over!
