This is long overdue.
Lufthansa deserves praise and I must apologize to them for delaying this post by nearly 4 months. 2 Days after the previous post on May 11, I received a call from a Senior Customer Care manager in the Frankfurt Headquarters, offering to reimburse me for the Unaccompanied Minor fees. They did not reimburse me for the time and energy I invested to get their attention for their mistakes, and perhaps it was simply to put the hatchet to rest, but nevertheless, I believe they clearly recognized the effect Social Media was having on their brand awareness and finally took action.
Thank you Lufthansa!
I can only hope that this experience was beneficial and educational to Lufthansa Customer Care, to Lufthansa as a company, and to Lufthansa customers around the world.
My lesson from this, is that it is not the Lufthansa Customer Service representatives but rather the Customer Service policy and those that design it that are creating this inefficiency and massive cost producing machine, that they are not keeping pace with the changing customer-driven communication now effecting their brand. It is glaringly obvious that there is a severe disconnect between the Lufthansa Social Media Department, the Brand Managers, and the archaic Lufthansa Customer Care Department.
Certainly it is not easy for a company with 117,000 employees to align these three departments so quickly, Customer Service, Brand Management, Social Media, but this excersize demonstrates to me that they are on the right track!
And they managed to convert me back into a happy customer.
