HOW I CAME TO LOVE RYANAIR
The Web customer is increasingly immune to marketing hype and
advertising dream-making.
Ryanair sells cheap flights. Over 40 million people bought cheap
flights from them in 2007. But Ryanair is a company that many
love to hate.
It's partly an Irish thing. Ryanair was this tiny Irish company
and now they're hugely successful. They've become too big for
their boots, as we say in Ireland. The Irish love to begrudge
and complain. They say a well-balanced Irishman is someone with
a chip on each shoulder.
The Irish media are really happy now that there are strong signs
of a global recession. They couldn't stand success. They were
becoming increasingly bitter about not having much to be bitter
about anymore. It was doing their heads in.
As the Irish economy boomed and the country was economically
transformed, the Irish intellectual elite and media pundits
complained about how Ireland was losing its soul, heart and
kidneys, and about how you still couldn't get a brain-transplant
in the local health clinic.
And Ryanair, oh Ryanair, what a horrible, soulless, heartless
company. Ryanair sold you tickets at half the price of their
competitors, but if you were one minute late, they wouldn't let
you on the plane. If your baggage was one milligram overweight,
you had to pay. And they didn't smile enough. It was insulting;
such terrible customer service!
Hold onto your smiles for a minute. Let's examine what customer
service actually is when it comes to flying. I want to fly from
Dublin to London. One airline offers to sell me a ticket for
e150 and Ryanair offers to sell it to me for e75. I can only
presume the other airline is saying to me: We charge e75 to
smile.
Here's my dream customer service. I want to reach my
destination, and get in and out of the airport, as quickly as
possible. Ryanair gets you on the plane really quickly and has
an excellent record for punctuality.
How do they do this? There's no allocated seating and they have
boarding stairs at the front and back of the plane. They're
punctual because they run a military-style operation and if
you're late, tough.
Ryanair are honest. They say: this is exactly what you get,
nothing more. Listen, I have promised many times never to fly
Ryanair again. I was a minute late, my bags were overweight, or
I made some small mistake, and Ryanair made me pay.
I changed my mind because Ryanair genuinely charges much less
than the competition. I changed my mind because, over the years,
I've realized that most airlines don't care very much about
their customers.
Ryanair is a product of the Web. The Web customer is more
cynical, skeptical and impatient. They love to compare and are
out for a good deal. The Web strips away a lot of the marketing
hype and advertising illusions that TV and print love to feed
us.
Ryanair delivers better value to the customer than its
competitors. You get what you pay for and you pay for what you
get. It's marketing and business stripped down to the bare
essentials. And it works. After all, 40 million customers can't
be wrong.
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