Heathrow airport: customer-unfriendly
Last night, as I walked towards security at Heathrow Airport (London), I took my computer out of my bag, as computers need to be scanned separately. Someone walked up to me and said:
“Is that a computer?”
“Yes.”
“Put it back in the bag.”
“Why? I have to take it out for scanning.”
“You must put it back in the bag before going through ticket check, then you can take it out again.” He stared at me, unsmiling and unfriendly. “Put it back in the bag now.”
Wendell (blog author) says:
Added on April 1st, 2007 at 9:36 pmThis is a prime example of how organizations try to get people to behave in ways that probably make sense from the standpoint of the rules-makers, but cause considerable discomfort to those who (ultimately) the rules are supposed to help. Probably nothing new, but if this kind of attitude is conveyed on a Web site, a lot can be lost.
Barry Hagan says:
Added on April 15th, 2007 at 12:47 pmHave you noticed how organization-centric people deliberately misunderstand the complaint? I came thru Heathrow a few weeks ago, transferring from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1 on a busy Friday. There is a central security clearing facility for transfer passengers. It has 8 stations. When we arrived at midday, the queues were out the entrance, and only 2 stations were manned. It took 40 minutes to get thru. The impression created for Heathrow, efficiency and customer service was awful. I spoke to this effect to a supervisor and asked why more stations weren’t manned? His response was a starchy that passenger security was in everyones interest and couldn’t be rushed or otherwise compromised. I wasn’t complaining about that!