Customer Frustration with Airlines and Telecoms: When Brand Promises Become Empty Shells

More and more, we ask ourselves: Is customer-centricity really being embraced, or is it just a hollow buzzword? The truth is, customer-centricity is hard. But ironically, it seems to have bypassed two industries entirely. Airlines and telecom companies are prime examples of how wide the gap between promise and reality can be.

Ignorance Real Customer Needs

Here lies the crux of the issue: Many companies in these sectors don’t just overlook their customers’ perspectives; they actively ignore them. Efficiency takes precedence over relevance. The result? Confusing pricing structures, stripped-down service offerings, endless hold times, hidden fees. Take airlines, for example: extra fees and convoluted booking systems are the norm. Meanwhile, service and product quality are relentlessly cut back. Why have five flight attendants when a single bottle of water—without a glass or cup—is all that’s served? Forget about the overpriced coffee or snacks from partner vendors, and let’s not even mention the long-defunct duty-free cart.

What happens to a brand that doesn’t even meet its customers’ basic needs, let alone their emotional desires? The answer is simple: it fails. Treating customers as nuisances rather than partners is a surefire way to dig your own grave. Trust evaporates, loyalty disintegrates—and quickly. Transparency? Absent. Fairness? A foreign concept. Reliability? Pure luck. If you can’t even master the basics, you can forget about building the emotional connections that foster true loyalty.

Telecom companies, too, dazzle with their insidious cleverness. Contracts marketed as “simple” turn out to be opaque and complicated. Extra roaming packages sometimes aren’t even technically available, and data bundles vanish within hours. These practices reflect an attitude that sees customers more as problems than as partners.

Customers as Powerless Supplicants

The real scandal? The tone. The attitude. Many companies treat their customers like children who need the world explained to them. Airlines arbitrarily decide which service is justified. Delayed flight? Lost luggage? Good luck getting through. With telecom providers, it’s the same game: rigid systems, inflexible contract structures, frustration all around. Customers feel disempowered, patronized, and exploited.

The Fatal Break Between Brand and Reality

And yet, these industries invest massively in their brands. Slick ad campaigns with dancing couples in sleek airplane cabins or famous Swiss ski and tennis stars paint a picture of closeness and excellence. The reality? A brand like Swiss, which promises to go “all the way,” sends its customers on an Air Baltic flight or cancels flights after hours of delays due to a lack of backup crew. Disappointment is inevitable.

Jean-Christophe Babin of Bulgari sums it up: “Brands that don’t understand their customers lose their relevance in the long term.” Brands are more than marketing. They are the yardstick against which every interaction is measured.

Why Does It Fail?

The reasons are manifold. Airlines struggle with low margins, telecom providers with regulated and overly complex markets. This leads to a focus on cost control—at the expense of the customer. Add to that a lack of courage: the courage to question existing systems and drive real innovation. And, even more critically, the lack of brand understanding: How do I position myself? How do I differentiate? Brands that fail to sharpen their identity lose relevance and distinction. But the biggest failure is not anchoring the brand promise as a guiding principle. Without this foundation, all initiatives remain piecemeal.

How Can It Be Better?

A radical change is needed:

1. End the Complexity: Products and processes must be transparent and understandable. Companies need to analyze their internal structures and remove obstacles that hinder the customer experience. This means no hidden fees, no convoluted tariffs, clear information. Digital solutions must be intuitive and customer-friendly. Transparency builds trust—and trust is the foundation of every customer relationship.
2. Take Customers Seriously: Customers are not just numbers in a system. Companies must actively listen, take feedback seriously, and integrate it into product development. Conducting superficial multiple-choice surveys that give the impression that customer opinions don’t really matter is not enough. True partnership arises when customers feel valued. This also means communicating on equal footing. An honest, solution-oriented customer service often makes the decisive difference.
3. Make the Brand Central to Leadership: The brand promise must become the guiding star of corporate strategy. It cannot remain an isolated task of marketing. Customer-centricity is also a matter of corporate culture: companies must live values that foster customer proximity and empathy. Only then does a brand promise become credible and a tool for sustainable success.

The Pivotal Turning Point: Now or Never

Customer-centricity is not an option. It is a survival strategy. Airlines and telecom companies stand at a crossroads. Customers have higher expectations, less patience—and more alternatives. Companies that consistently use their brand promise as a leadership tool can align aspiration with reality. Brand promises must be more than (empty) words: they are commitments—and these must be fulfilled through corresponding actions.