Sunday, March 11, 2012

Eagle Travels-exemplary 'customer service' or great disaster management?

Eagle Travels(trade name of 'Falcon Travels Pvt Ltd'-the owner seems having a fetish for birds) was the operator by which I'd booked a 7:45pm bus from Mumbai to Ahmedabad(boarding Sion). I got a call from them apologizing for their having to delay the departure by 2hrs(guess they cancelled that bus due to poor occupancy and booked me to the next bus). Since my arrival at Ahmedabad was not that time sensitive, I decided to carry on and boarded the bus at 9:45pm, but it turned out it was a Surat bound bus which would drop me to Borivali for a 11pm bus from there. At 10pm, the bus broke down at a signal on the Western Express highway near VileParle, and nearly 1hr was lost in pushing the bus/trying to repair etc. Mechanics and a manager came quite quickly and tried to solve the problem.

I was fretting about my connecting bus, but was assured that it would be managed. Suddenly at 11:10pm, I was taken to a sumo where the owner dropped me to the boarding point(while stopping at one of his shops to collect the cash and accounts!), making some small chat etc and apologizing for the delay. After a 15min journey in AC comfort, I reached Borivali where the bus was waiting for me. When I entered it(was allocated the same window seat), the passengers were somewhat irked saying that the bus had waited 30min for me!(dunno what the bus driver told them). Anyways, the bus was quite comfortable(no jerks/great seats) and small things like water etc was provided, and it reached Ahmedabad without incident and just in 9hrs.

I was quite impressed by their holding up the bus for one person(it was their fault but perhaps they could have used some other operator..) and also by the fact that a person from their end was calling me up around 15min/30min before the scheduled boarding to confirm I'd reached. Not sure whether this is standard practice or not, but I did feel I was in competent hands and they had  a great tracking system. Taking me in the AC sumo did do the trick and eased my mood considerably, else I'd all but decided to sue them for deficiency in service! In all, an eventful 2hrs, I lost that much of sleep, but was impressed by how they managed the whole thing. 

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