Lame Air Asia baggage policy

I had a terrible customer service experience yesterday.

I flew Air Asia to Thailand. When I purchased the tickets online, I found that only one checkin bag of 15kg was allowed, but I could purchase additional baggage allowance. So I purchased a second checkin bag allowance.

When I showed up to check in, the first thing the staff greeted me with was, "You are going to be overweight." Hello, glad to see you, too.

I then explained I had purchased a second checkin bag, to which he explained to me that the weight allowance REMAINED THE SAME at 15 kg PER PERSON, that the additional baggage allowed me to SPREAD THE 15KG among multiple bags.

What?!! Have you heard of a more deceptive or stupid policy?

I haven't and I said so. Somewhat loudly. I asked to see the manager. He pointed me in a direction. Guess what, there was a line to see the manager. I went back to the checkin line, and the service person told me, "Please don't be angry with me, I am just doing my job." I apologized for being angry and told him I was not angry at him, I was angry at the policy and the way it was presented. He said "A lot of customers are surprised and angry about it."

Not only is it a bad policy that makes customers like me angry at Air Asia, but the staff who helped me is in the wrong line of work. His job is not to protect his feelings, his job is to serve the customer and make them happy. He should look for different work.

Some thoughts from Seth Godin on the lame excuse "I'm just doing my job..."

Post Election Tantrums

The minority is outraged that they lost the ballot battle on California's Proposition 8, and they want the majority to pay for it. Does this kind of behavior make anyone more sympathetic to their cause? I feel sorry for those being harassed and coerced.

More than a week after the passage of Proposition 8, activists opposed to the ban on gay marriage have shifted their protests to new arenas -- using boycotts to target businesses and individuals who contributed to the winning side.

Some gay rights activists also have gone onto the restaurant website yelp.com, giving bad reviews to eateries linked to the Yes on 8 movement.

"This one star is for their stance on Prop. 8," one poster wrote of El Coyote Mexican Cafe. "Enjoy it. . . . You deserve it."

Hundreds of protesters converged on El Coyote on Beverly Boulevard on Wednesday night, and the picketing got so heated that LAPD officers in riot gear had to be called.

All because Marjorie Christoffersen, a manager there and a daughter of El Coyote's owner, had contributed $100 to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Christoffersen, who is Mormon, met with protesters Wednesday and at one point broke down in tears, said Arnoldo Archila, another El Coyote manager. But the activists were not satisfied with her explanation and continued to post protests about her on the Web.

"She had a chance to make nice and blew it. I was almost feeling a tiny bit of sympathy for her. Not no more!!" wrote one blog poster, who also listed competing Mexican restaurants where diners should go instead of El Coyote.

Finding Talent

A great lesson for spiritual leaders from Tom Peters. Don't see proteges as threats that need to be controlled, see their success as the fruit of your mentoring. Work for it and celebrate it! We should all be talent scouts in one way or another.

In the last week or so, I came across an old Rolling Stone article (28 June 2007) about The Police—the '80s rock band that recently completed a $358-million reunion tour. In the article, drummer Stewart Copeland was singing the praises of Sting, the lead singer who originally broke up the group in 1984 (at the height of their glory) to begin his mega-successful solo career. But, instead of being resentful of the superstar status Sting had achieved on his own, Copeland actually took pride in it because—as he explained—he was the one who discovered Sting back in 1976. "Sting's my guy! I found him. I'm proud of him. When they shouted his name at shows, I was like, 'Yeah, that's my guy.'" Copeland, you see, identified himself as a talent scout, not just as a drummer or a band member. That way Sting's accomplishments became his accomplishments. This struck me as instructive to organizational leaders who, if they choose to, can take pride in their ability to identify—as well as develop and promote—talent.

Developing Customers Requires Understanding Them

This wisdom from Seth Godin:

Every business has customers. In order to grow, you either need to sell more to those customers or find new customers. When thinking about your business, I'd ask:

-How difficult is it to get permission to talk to our existing customers?
-How difficult is it to get them to introduce us to their friends, colleagues and competitors?
-What's the worldview of this audience? Do they trust us? Are they looking for new solutions?
-Will this audience go out of their way to avoid us? Will they try to rip us off as a matter of course?
-How price sensitive are they? Will that change if a truly remarkable or game-changing product or service appears?
-Is there a problem that they know they have? If not, then we have to not only sell the solution, we need to sell the problem too (Jeremy mentioned that to me today--problems are missing from so many new product launches).

The biggest problem marketers make is misjudging their audience. The see the size of the market, but not its true nature: Their accessibility and eagerness. Their worldview and motivation. All too often, we say, "that's Sales' job." And it's true, a superstar salesperson might very well be able to sell to an audience that doesn't want to be sold to.

Marketers are guilty of hoping for too much from a typical salesforce. In my experience, 90% of the salespeople out there are below average (because performance is a curve, not a line). The superstars are hard to find, hard to keep and hard to count on scaling. So that means you must create a product that doesn't require a superstar to sell it. And the only way you're going to sell an ad to a [insert difficult marketplace here] is to create a product/service/story that sells itself.

Rules for excellence...

...by the author of "In Search of Excellence." (Scroll to the bottom to see his list.)

While everyone is trumpeting internationalization, almost all excellence is demonstrated locally!

Rules for Success...

...in a gloomy economic environment. Back to basics!

What makes a good marketer

Article by Seth Godin on what to look for in hiring a marketer. Relentlessly positive!