Lessons From L'affaire Indigo

Frontline staff needs to be trained in the critical nuances of customer handling

- Col Hemraj Singh Parmar

Let’s face it Indigo screwed up, and big time! How could a reputable airline such as Indigo with more than 38% of the market share, a Passenger Load Factor (PLF) of more than 80%, one of the lowest passenger related complaints at a negligible 0.2/10000 pax and a credible On-Time Performance (OTP) schedule screw it up so badly?

Needless to say, they sinned on the basic principle of customer delight! They have worked hard and consistently to reach the top echelons of the aviation industry, but perhaps that lulled them into complacency. It’s natural to ask as to how did an airline known for its punctuality and good services land itself up in such a soup? The incident of manhandling has spawned a generation of memes and jokes, while the carrier suffers new business catastrophe of monumental proportions. What are the key lessons for the healthcare industry and for the senior honchos here?

Lessons for Healthcare Industry 

There are plenty of lessons I guess, not the least customer orientation and speedy ‘service recovery’ in case things do go wrong, as sometimes they will. Failure is not a choice here.

We encounter similar situations in our hospitals on a routine basis. Some of them are even graver in nature with potential for violence against doctors and hospital staff or even litigation. Many patients will not pay for the services availed of. Sometimes hospital bills raised are more than that the patient was counseled for, or there’s a clinical/ managerial mismanagement or a death case for whatever reasons. These are reasons enough for the patient or his dependents to go ballistic.