My twelve year old daughter travelled alone to one of the coastal towns in East Africa to visit a family friend and also for her holidays.

 On the day of her travel from here, everything went smoothly after checking her in and I waited until her flight took off before I went back home. On her coming back on Monday, that is where all hell broke loose.

On the day before her coming back to Kigali, I was chatting with her online asking her to pack her clothes that evening so that the following day she can be on time to catch her flight back home.

As I was chatting with my girl, I decided to check on the website of this airline the exact time of her flight only for me to be shocked.

The flight time had been changed and we were not informed, meaning had I not checked the website at that given time which was actually at nine in the night, my daughter would have missed her flight, not out of her fault, but because she was not informed of the changes.

On top of that, on her arrival at the airport, when checking in, my friend who had gone to drop her was told that she could not be checked in until after some amount of money is paid. She called me and I promised to pay here upon her arrival.

Now what surprised me is that no information was given to me when I went to buy her ticket about the extra fee to be paid.

This is a company I have used for all my travels for many years. I went to their office lodged in my complaint and was heard. Now after the episode I kept thinking of people who maybe were not informed of the flight change, only for them to go to the airport and be informed of the changes when they had already missed the flight, I was lucky because my home laptop came in handy that day and my daughter caught her flight.

What I am saying here, is that whatever services a company offers, it is very important for them to inform their clients of any changes if at all there is any.

Unlike me, some people prefer to keep quite when they are not satisfied with some services, and when a person behaves like that, it is sure thing that a company has lost a client for good.

There are steps that can be taken to ensure that all information meant for clients, gets to them on time to avoid hurting anyone. In fact thanks to technology, most people can either be found online on emails or mobile phones.

So there should be no excuse as to why a client is not sent a very important message.

In these tough economic times, it’s more important than ever to ensure that clients are never lost to a competitor, more especially when a situation can be avoided. Finding a new client can become harder, so maintaining good client relations is important as well.

No client is better than the next; all have equal importance to your business. It really doesn’t take much to treat customers well. But you have to recognize their value. And also you have to be willing to take a bit more time to give the clients the information they need at the right time.

Treating customers well and making sure that all information needed is well communicated is the path towards increased customer loyalty, word of mouth, business growth and success.

Ends