Ryanair a reçu la meilleure lettre de réclamation du monde

Les plaintes sont importantes pour les entreprises car elles devraient leur permettent d’améliorer la satisfaction et la fidélisation de la clientèle. Pourtant, la plupart des entreprises ne répondent pas aux réclamations (50-60% selon Prof. Davidow dont l’interview se trouve ci-dessous), ce qui reste une expérience très frustrante pour les ceux qui se plaignent. C’est en tout cas ce à quoi vous pouvez vous attendre si vous envoyer une réclamation à Ryanair. Vous pouvez également vous attendre à recevoir une réponse avec une attitude défensive de la part de Ryanair.
Sur la base de ma longue expérience des plaintes et des nombreux « combats » que j’ai gagnés, voici mes conseils. Dans cet article, vous trouverez également un bel exemple sous la forme d’une réclamation (sûrement la meilleure que j’ai eu l’occasion de lire) envoyée par un client de Ryanair insatisfait.

Sommaire

• Que peut-on attendre du traitement de votre plainte par Ryanair ?
• Déposer une réclamation à Ryanair : la stratégie gagnante
• La meilleure plainte jamais envoyée à Ryanair

Que peut-on attendre du traitement de votre plainte par Ryanair ?

Soyons honnêtes. Vous ne devez vous attendre à rien d’autre qu’à une lettre de refus. Pendant longtemps, la compagnie irlandaise a revendiqué haut et fort que seul le prix l’intéressait et que la qualité de service passait au second plan. Bien que le PDG de Ryanair essaie de changer les choses afin de regagner des parts de marché, sur le terrain les mauvaises habitudes des employés sont difficiles à faire changer. Ce type de pratiques est très courant dans les entreprises en général, et notamment dans les compagnies aériennes. La plupart du temps, l’entreprise est d’abord préoccupée par la défense de ses intérêts plutôt que par ceux de ses clients.
Qu’il est loin le mythe de l’orientation client et de la « customer centricity » si chère à nos CEO’s. Vous vous souvenez peut l’histoire de Dave Carroll et de United Airlines (voir également ici l’interview de Dave Carroll), ou celle de Kenny et du Crédit Mutuel (lire ici l’interview de Kenny Martineau). Toutes deux avaient fait le buzz et avaient atteintes des millions de vues sur YouTube grâce à des mises en scène originales.

Malheureusement, les mauvaises pratiques de Ryanair tendent à se propager à d’autres compagnies aériennes. Une étude publiée en 2017 par l’organisme de surveillance des consommateurs Which ? a révélé que la décision de refuser de compenser les passagers était injustifiée dans :

• 83% des cas de Norwegian
• 77% des cas de Ryanair
• 69% des cas de Thomson
• 73% des pour Iberia
• 48% des cas pour British Airways

Que devez-vous faire pour faire valoir vos droits

Ça m’est arrivé en allant à la conférence RecSys à Vancouver alors que mon vol avait été retardé de 5 heures. Ce jour-là, je volais avec Air Canada en provenance de Bruxelles. Je ne m’attendais pas à éprouver des difficultés pour recevoir une compensation, pourtant Air Canada a usé de nombreux arguments fallacieux pour refuser ma demande. L’affaire a dû être portée devant les tribunaux et j’ai fini par gagner. Il m’aura fallu un peu plus d’un an pour gagner.

Je savais que j’étais dans mes droits and j’ai pris toutes les précautions pour le prouver :

• J’ai innocemment demandé à membre de l’équipage les raisons du retard et aie enregistré sa réponse (« les pneus devaient être changés et il n’y avait pas de pneu disponible au terminal des départs »)
• Je n’ai pas utilisé le bon en ‘miles’ offert par Air Canada à notre arrivée (ce qui m’aurait fait perdre mes droits)
• J’ai gardé tous mes reçus
• J’ai pris des photos du retard annoncé sur les écrans

J’ai demandé à RefundMyTicket d’agir en mon nom, mais même eux ont rencontré des difficultés et ont porté l’affaire devant les tribunaux 12 mois après le vol. Une fois le processus juridique engagé, Air Canada a magiquement commencé à coopérer et a fini par payer la compensation due.

Une lettre de réclamation historique envoyée à Ryanair

Je suis tombé sur une lettre de réclamation étonnante sur l’excellent site Dear Customers Relations. Cette lettre a été publiée à l’origine par James Lockley sur Facebook et ridiculise les mauvaises pratiques de Ryanair de salariés grâce à une prose ironique et des qualités d’écriture certaines. Je parie que la lecture de cette lettre va certainement illuminer votre journée et vous assurera quelques francs éclats de rire, surtout si vous avez déjà fait l’expérience Ryanair.

La réclamation postée par James Lockley sur Facebook

Ce qui m’a le plus frappé dans les réponses fournies par les employés de Ryanair c’est leur manque total d’empathie, une incapacité à être créatif et à déroger aux règles (parfois absurdes) fixées par l’entreprise, et leur réticence à prendre des initiatives. Les initiatives prises pour mieux satisfaire un client devraient être récompensées; une société où elles ne le sont pas, où les employés ont peur de prendre des initiatives, n’a visiblement rien compris au concept même de satisfaction client. A l’heure actuelle, faire preuve d’autant d’arrogance et de si peu d’orientation client, c’est mettre en danger la survie de l’entreprise.

Malgré ses belles paroles et ses bonnes résolutions, il semblerait que O’Leary ait encore du pain sur la planche pour faire passer sa nouvelle stratégie auprès de ses employés. L’amélioration de l’image de marque de son entreprise en dépend pourtant.

Bonne lecture.

Dear Sir/Madam,I am writing for the attention of your customer experience team. I am definitely a customer, and believe me, you didn’t fail providing us with an experience.

My wife and I had booked to fly from Stansted on the Thursday 17th April, evening flight to Bratislava. After 2 hours of fun, fun, fun, stuck on the M25 doing 20 mph, we arrived at Stansted check in with just one hour until the flight. Knowing the strict Ryan Air policy on ‘check in closes 40 mins before the flight’ as you are the Low Fare Taxi of The Skies, we went straight to the Ryan Air assistant and explained our plight. She said we were still within the time and all would be fine but we had to make the attendant at check in aware and he would assist from there.

We approached the attendant as instructed and explained. Unfortunately, in the main part, due to him being a child, and forgetting to bring his mother to work, he heard only half of the words before his brain fell apart like a wet cake. He led us to the line for closing gates, advised we should wait and all would be ok. We stood patiently in the line for 20 minutes. We got to the front of the line and the lady, who we shall from this point refer to as Vacant, explained that she had literally just that second closed the flight and we had missed it. We complained that we had done as instructed and she said it was the child’s fault because he should have advised her that we were trying to board a closing flight and that because he hadn’t told her it was therefore our fault we had missed the plane.

Confused by this process of blame apportioning, another check in clerk, who we shall refer to as Not That Bright, tried to blame us for not responding to the last call for the flight as we should have made ourselves known. I argued that the last call had not been made. Not That Bright then questioned Vacant on whether she had done a final call. Vacant did what she does best and looked, well,…… After establishing that the child had not informed Vacant we were here, and Vacant had forgotten to do a last call and that all of this was irreversible, and my fault, Not That Bright and Vacant conferred to agree this was not a problem they wished to deal with and told us to get in a very, very long line of very, very unhappy people at the quite wrongly titled ‘Customer Services Counter’ as it was in fact a Customer Shouting Desk. We complained and requested the attention of a manager.

Out came Colin, a man so angry all his hair had literally fallen out. He was so aggressive I can only assume he had accidentally inserted something sharp into somewhere private and been unable to remove it before he came to work. He was definitely a middle Gimp. I know this as Vacant and Not That Bright were clearly quite scared of him, and he can’t have been a Big Cheese as he was talking directly to customers and we all know from the papers that no-one in Big Cheese management at Ryan Air has ever seen, let alone spoken to an actual customer.

Middle Gimp had clearly listen hard at Ryan Air Middle Gimp school as he managed to take two perfectly calm and sane adults and in a matter of seconds reduce them to angry people considering violence.

‘Check in opens 3 hours before the flight’ he barked repeatedly as if it was the answer to every question in life. We tried to ask Middle Gimp direct questions about why it was necessary for us to miss the flight because the Child had forgotten to do his job, and Vacant had forgotten to do hers.

‘Why is this our fault, and why should we miss the flight because Ryan Air staff have admitted they made errors?.

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Do you acknowledge we have just cause for complaint as we tried to do the right thing and the only reason we are not on the plane is because of communication failures with Ryan Air Staff?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘What colour are my trousers?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Do you think economic sanctions on Russia will diffuse the escalating situation in Ukraine?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Were Man Utd right to fire David Moyes?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘My tinkle is hurting, could you take a look if I promise not to tell anyone?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

Middle Gimp then conferred with Vacant and Not That Bright, and agreed that this was all our fault as we should have noticed that Child had made an error and we should have called the flight ourselves to assist Vacant in doing her job because she was clearly busy being, well,…… Middle Gimp then insisted we go to customer the Customer Shouting Desk, as he was definitely not going to do anything else. This was handy as the queue was very long so that by the time we would reach the front the plane would be half way to Bratislava and the problem would be solved.

We waited patiently in line as customer after customer stood at the desk to hear the same song;

‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’

We got to the Customer Shouting Desk and explained our plight to the lady there (who was actually very nice and clearly should not be working for Ryan Air as a result). She apologised but explained that Middle Gimp had finished being angry for the day and had returned to his padded cage, and there were no other Middle Gimps around. We would have to book in to the flight for the next day and we would have to pay £110 each to change the ticket. When she tried to re-book the flight she said that the flight we had tried to get was actually delayed by 1 hour and still at the airport and that what we should do is run to the gate with all our luggage, she would call through and they would check our bags into the hold at the gate. We ran as fast as we could, which is not very fast because I am fat, to security to do as instructed. Security advised us that because our flight should have left, even though it hadn’t, the ticket machine would not open the barrier for us and we would need to return to the Customer Shouting Desk.

We waited patiently in the very long queue yet again for about 40 minutes to discover the nice lady had also gone home now so we had to explain the whole thing again to a new lady that looked like all the joy had been removed from her life at birth. She recited the Ryan Air customer services song with a sterling level of apathy and dreariness, I am surprised she could muster the will just to breathe and stay alive.

‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’

She recited it with perfection, Middle Gimps across the world would have been in awe and the effectiveness of the techniques taught in Middle Gimp School. Seeing no other option but to hand over all our cash and come back the next morning we happily paid and got new flights.

As the new flight was at 6.25am in the morning we decided to get a hotel, we paid £79 for a room and got a taxi.

So, our customer experience was insightful and liberating. From the incompetent Child with a brain so full of girls and Vauxhall Corsa modifications he couldn’t actually listen or speak, through Vacant and Not That Bright who decided on reflection that anything they did wrong was our fault for not pointing it out to them, right through Middle Gimp who made a Tasmanian Devil look calm and Zen like, and the sad one, oh so sad, having every last drop of life sucked out of her by her chosen career at the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk. I very nearly jumped over the desk just to give her a cuddle and tell her everything would be alright if she could just muster the will to leave the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk and find a more fulfilling job, like starting the very first Israeli pork pie factory, or being a parking attendant in Tower Hamlets, or in fact just resigning herself to a slow and uncomfortable death would have been indistinguishable from the current position and would require much less effort.

The net result of this ‘experience’ was;

New Flights – £220
Hotel £79
Taxi x 2 £50
Worlds most expensive sandwich in the only hotel we could get £35

1 x significant breach of Tort Law (2008 as quoted by Lord Atkin) by Ryan Air, Google it, it’s a cracking read. I will leave you to decide the monetary value of this.

1 x very angry and upset wife, in particular with Middle Gimp for being so unbelievably rude.

1 x Missed wedding reception for our Slovakian family (sorry, forgot to mention this nugget earlier) who all turned up from all over the country to see us for an event we were forced to miss, because Child and Vacant are clueless at best and Middle Gimp has anger management issues.

So, thank you Ryan Air for a comfortable and enjoyable experience. I have watched a program called the news so I fully expect this to land on the desk of the customer services team underneath the empty bottles and sandwich wrappers that you also file there. You treated us badly, you cost us money and made us miss our wedding reception through a display of incompetence I have not seen since Greece was allowed to have money and a cheque book.

I sincerely doubt you will do anything about this, compensate us, apologise, or even respond according to the news, so I have sent this recorded and sign for delivery to absolutely confirm my opinion of Ryan Air and that it is not just ‘lost in the post’

Regards

You bunch of…………….

DJ Lockley

P.S. Maybe Middle Gimp in particular, but Child, Not That Bright, and Vacant should purchase one of your reasonably priced tickets and go to Slovakia (assuming they were actually allowed on the plane). The Ryan Air employees there are smart, clever, bilingual, helpful, and polite and they should in my opinion experience an example of how they should do their jobs. The Slovak staff could explain it to them, but they wouldn’t be able to understand it for them, so it may be a waste of time after all.

Photo : Rob Wilson / Shutterstock.com

Par Pierre-Nicolas Schwab Pierre-Nicolas est Docteur en Marketing et dirige l'agence d'études de marché IntoTheMinds. Ses domaines de prédilection sont le BigData l'e-commerce, le commerce de proximité, l'HoReCa et la logistique. Il est également chercheur en marketing à l'Université Libre de Bruxelles et sert de coach et formateur à plusieurs organisations et institutions publiques. Il peut être contacté par email, Linkedin ou par téléphone (+32 486 42 79 42)