The Age of Hurt Feelings

Ah, the grand kerfuffle over a tiny little card. It was a spat between two mighty institutions – one public, one private, that ended up in recriminations over high-handedness, arrogance and the need to apply rules rigorously. As is usual with such incidents, a lot turns on a (mis)heard phrase, a perceived attitude, and perceptions of historical grievance that colour the whole incident and mean that the truth (whatever that’s worth) will get buried in a mound of politics and corporate PR that will leave no one any the wiser.

To recap, in case you were not paying attention last Thursday night and Friday morning: a group of legislators were travelling on a late-evening flight to Mombasa on Kenya Airways, and Senator Moses Wetangula got into a dispute with the airline over the fact that he had not carried his national ID. The airline’s staff insisted that he produce it, and the resultant standoff led to the deplaning of an entire flight, and a delayed journey for dozens. It also led to an expression of hurt Senatorial feelings, an insistence on the rules by the airline (which says that it would be subject to significant fines and sanctions if it broke the rules), and a legislature that has decided to set aside all business to discuss the conduct of an airline this afternoon. That’s right – no discussion of the country’s security situation, or state of education, or economic policy. A parliamentary session has been set aside for legislators to immortalise their unhappiness with how they have been treated by the staff of the national airline.

As I said, we are well beyond the point of ever knowing what the truth of the matter is, so what we’re left with (as usual) is a bunch of lessons that will hopefully improve your stock of knowledge and give columnists across the land something to pontificate about.

The first is the nature of rules. Online commentary on the matter quickly devolved into two large camps. On the one side were those who insisted that rules are rules. They are immutable (especially in this case), and should be applied equally and without regard to social standing. This is the group that gets irritated by the now-common habit by potentates of all stripes of breaking traffic laws. Governors, senators, cabinet secretaries and MPs are all trying to get into the motorcade business, with flashing lights and rude bodyguards supposed to magically create a path through stubborn traffic build-ups. It is leading to the political equivalent of spoiled brats – a whole cohort of national and sub-national leadership who believe that the rules only apply to the ordinary and the powerless. It works for a while, until it bumps up against the outrage of a fed-up citizenry. The day one of those self-important motorcades causes a fatal accident, the resulting scenes will not be pretty.

The other side is the customer service side. The idea here is that rules are meant to serve customers, not serve as a barrier. This shade of thinking contends that the incident at JKIA could have been resolved with a judicious application of discretion, and dozens of passengers, rather than being inconvenienced, would not even have noticed that anything was amiss. You know that message that comes on at the beginning of customer service phone calls: ‘this call may be monitored for quality purposes’? There are some who say that this Big Brotherish scrutiny is leading to worse customer service outcomes, because agents feel nervous about reaching outside the rulebook to resolve problems. Point is, though, that giving customer touch points the full discretion to unravel customer problems could lead to total chaos, as agents determined solutions from gut feel. This could cost companies money and, eventually, customers. The (part-) solution to this has often been to give discretionary decision-making powers up to a limit, beyond which problems have to be kicked upstairs to a supervisor or manager.

The other, perhaps underlying issue that arose out of the incident is the nature of respect. Pity the Kenyan public figure, circa 2014. Whereas in years past everyone knew you by name, sight, affiliation and reputation, there are now so many of you that you could conceivably be President and pass your days in anonymity, as everyone paid attention to the next bleached, vacuous ‘celebrity’. The question ‘do you know who I am?’ can quite honestly be met with a ‘No’, even when you’re a leader in the Senate. Even worse is the irreverence of modern existence. Gone are the days when age, life station or reputation guaranteed one a semblance of respect. Now, it almost has to be earned on a daily basis, and the online hordes will make sure that any self-importance is punctured in an instant. This makes it doubly difficult for companies. They can carefully curate their image and reputation for decades, only for a disgruntled customer with a smartphone and a grievance to bring this all crashing down in a matter of days.

Thus we’ll see more of these incidents in the coming months and years. One only hopes that all involved take a step back and deflate tense situations. As for you, dear reader, always carry your ID.

Also published in the Business Daily on October 28, 2014 at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Customer-care-lessons-from-KQ-and-Wetang-ula-dispute/-/539548/2501140/-/item/0/-/ewjbb4/-/index.html