A Virgin Customer-Service Experience

By Andrew Pryfogle, President & CEO, Terrapin Solutions, LLC

In the interest of full disclosure, you should first know that I am sitting on a Virgin America flight from Boston to SFO, typing out this blog on a Google Chromebook provided for free as a demo on this flight. Very cool. It’s working surprisingly well, so my overall experience with Virgin’s customer service is already a bit biased toward the awesome. Anyway, here goes …

Everything breaks. Products. Networks. Systems. Processes. When the inevitable happens, that’s when a service provider’s real capabilities, character and culture are put to the test. This is when life-long customers are won or life-long critics are born.

On our flight earlier this week from SFO to BOS, Virgin America’s “luggage handling process" broke. We’ve all had our luggage lost or delayed at some point, but this was unique. The luggage for this entire flight was mistakenly loaded on the wrong plane. One-hundred fifty people arrived in Boston while their luggage arrived in Dallas … good times. What could have been a nightmarish travel experience actually turned in to an opportunity for Virgin America to shine … and they did.

The flight was greeted by smiling, apologetic and patient VA employees. They had already completed paperwork for all 150 passengers. One woman actually greeted us by name: “Mr. & Mrs. Pryfogle, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. I have all the paperwork already completed. Your luggage will be arriving later this evening. We can hold it here for you to pick up later or we’re happy to deliver it anywhere you’d like." Warm, assuring, empathetic.

Too often as customers we are made to feel just the opposite, as if it is on us to apologize. “I’m so sorry YOU lost MY luggage and now I have to inconvenience you with all this paperwork. I know you are likely underpaid and tired after a long day. If there is anything I can do to make your epic failure less burdensome on you, please let me know. Please don’t worry, your exaggerated sighs and rolling of the eyes are not offending me at all."

But Virgin America didn’t just stop at empathy and kindness. “Mr. & Mrs. Pryfogle, we’ve waived all your luggage fees and are giving you a voucher to cover all your luggage fees on your return. If you want to wait for your luggage to arrive, we’d like to buy you dinner. If you would like to return later, we’ll cover any parking fees you may incur. We really want to do whatever we can to make this right." Impressive.

So Virgin America turned a bad situation into a great customer-service experience and turned this too-often critic into a raving fan. It’s clear that Virgin America’s response was not random or by accident or isolated to one kind person. This was clearly a commitment to great service from the top down. This commitment is part of the culture of this company … any other response would have gone against their character. I love that. I want my company, Terrapin Solutions, to also be known for that kind of commitment to great service … especially when things break.

Thank you Virgin America. And thank you for the use of this awesome Google Chromebook … rock on, Cloud, rock on.

Andrew Pryfogle is the founder, president and CEO of Terrapin Solutions, a master agency headquartered in San Francisco’s East Bay. Pryfogle started Terrapin to address the growing demand for cloud services such as hosted VoIP, cloud computing and cloud infrastructure. He has been in the telecommunications industry for 22 years and has held senior sales leadership positions with carriers such as AT&T, MCI and WorldCom. In 2001 Pryfogle helped start GoBeam Communications, a pioneer in hosted IP telephony that was sold in 2004 to Covad Communications where Pryfogle spent three years running the channel.  He also is a member of the 2010-11 Channel Partners Conference & Expo Advisory Board.