KLM flooded with complaints about poor customer service
Online, KLM is being flooded with complaints from customers about the Dutch airline’s poor customer service. KLM blames it on bad luck with snow cancelling many flights last month, and a Schiphol outage resulting in left-behind luggage the month before. The airline says it is deploying extra staff to help customers, but it seems to have little effect, RTL Nieuws reports.
On the review site Trustpilot, a customer complained that KLM’s policy seems to be “not to answer complaints.” Another said they hung up after being on hold for an hour in the afternoon. “Now, early evening again, same story. Is anyone even there, you wonder?” Another: “I’ve been trying to reach customer services for 10 days.”
A customer on Facebook said he has been waiting for a claim request to be processed since October. Another has been waiting for nine days for a response on his lost luggage. “No call, no message, no compensation despite repeated messages.”
The Dutch airline isn’t only hard to reach by phone. Customers trying to talk to someone on WhatsApp complain that they can’t get past the chatbot to speak to an actual person.
KLM blames the delayed response on the flood of customer inquiries resulting from the hundreds of canceled flights due to heavy snowfall in January, and the malfunction in Schiphol’s baggage handling system at the end of December.
RTL tested the situation with a WhatsApp query about a cancellation. It took two days of back-and-forth messaging to get an answer, the broadcaster said. A query about a lost suitcase received this reply after days of follow-up: "I see that the claim is currently still in the waiting list. The department is currently dealing with enormous volumes, which is why it is unfortunately taking longer than expected. I cannot expedite the process; I advise you to wait. Thank you for your understanding and patience."
The broadcaster also called it striking that KLM seems to be trying to avoid direct contact between the customer and the company as much as possible. The airline’s contact page lists no phone number or email address. It takes several clicks to get to more contact information.
According to Eric Pels, an aviation economist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, KLM set itself up for this level of complaints by positioning itself as a full-service airline. “They sell quality, and you expect good customer service,” Pels told RTL. Low-cost airlines can get away with more by saying “you get what you pay for, and that’s not much,” he said. KLM’s business model is different.
Paul Veneker of EUclaim, an organization that helps passengers file claims against airlines, told RTL that airlines give little priority to after-sales service. “You book a service well in advance, and then they have the money. That’s a completely different incentive than other companies that only receive money once a service or product has been delivered.”
In the first 26 days of this year, EUClaim received four times as many claims against KLM as in the same period last year, totaling 212. “While the situation is obviously different in the two years, this doesn’t alter the fact that as an airline you have a duty of care,” Vaneker said. “Passengers simply deserve to be helped by KLM.”
