Service level – Comparison between Hong Kong and France

I had a visit from my family recently and we ended up talking about the level of service customers receive in Hong Kong as compared to France. My family members were complaining that in Hong Kong any request that is a bit “outside of the box” meets the same “it is not possible” answer or sends the customer service staff into pure panic. At first, the comments made me hesitate. Was I wrong? Is service in France better? Did it change? A trip to France and going through a French airport helped me put my thoughts back in order…

When flying Air France from Hong Kong these days, you arrive at a brand new terminal in Paris – Charles de Gaulle airport. The problem is… the terminal is not totally finished. So upon arrival, instead of stationing at a gate, the plane stops away from the gate and passengers need to take a bus to reach the terminal. Keeping in mind that most Asian flights reach Paris around the same time (in between 6am and 8am) and that security measures (I guess) has policemen check passports when passengers get off the bus at the only available door of the terminal, passengers after a 12-hour or more flight are forced to wait standing on the bus for a certain period of time (from 10 to 30 minutes I guess) while buses in front of them finished getting emptied from their passengers.

Once this first step completed, passengers have to go through immigration, which is compulsory even for passengers in transit (strange if people fly to another country). There two or three lines are available. Each line is wide enough for 3 to 4 people to stand side-by-side leading to much pushing and jumping of the queue. The lack of signs leaves passengers  wondering if they are in the right queue, while passengers with a connecting flight are stressed out because they are afraid to miss their flight because of the long queue.

The airport, I guess realizing passengers’ distress, had a ground staff standing next to the queues to assist. One passenger in front of me asked the staff: “I will miss my connecting flight which leaves in 30 minutes. What can I do?”. Then the staff to answer: “Sorry, I can’t do anything for you. You have to queue up. If you miss your flight, well, you just miss it”. Sure enough the passenger after this was not in distress anymore… but just was plain angry!

In my two-way flights between Hong Kong and France, I had many more stories on board the plane, in the airport, in the parking lot of the airport…
The result was clear to me. Living in Hong Kong is great! People may not be the best problem solvers, but at least the infrastructure and processes are designed following best practices and most of the time the service received is very acceptable. In France, where I think people are much better at solving problems, the infrastructure is the problem. Places, things and processes are not designed in a customer-centered way (here I generalize too much to make my point) and it makes service levels even lower. Hopefully, and some examples seem to show it is the case, things may change in France.