When charm takes flight

It’s Wednesday evening, I’m 36,000ft above the province of Quebec and in a few minutes the pilot will announce to me and the other 200 or so passengers on this tired Boeing 767 that we’re about to start our descent into Toronto and that we should be on the ground in about 40 minutes.

For the first part of the flight I slept – as usual, I was asleep even before we pushed back. Somewhere just west of Greenland, I woke up in a darkened cabin to the sound of snoring, slurping, drooling sounds and the tinny din of an MP3 player cranked up far too loud. I wandered into the galley for a drink and opted for a cranberry juice. “Is it OK if I give you plastic?” asked the flight attendant. “I could go to the other galley and get you a glass but this is quicker.”

I shrugged and frowned and thanked him for my drink. I gulped it down and then shoved the cup in an overflowing bin. I ducked into the loo on the way back to my seat and made it a very quick visit – the little space was so dirty and worn-out that it made me wonder how the rest of the aircraft was held together. Every seam and joint had been taped and re-caulked so many times that the bathroom must have shrunk in size. And as you might be reading this over breakfast, I won’t describe the fumes.

Back at my seat, I started thinking about how great brands fall from grace and whether there’s a connection between Irish chief executives at large global airlines and an erosion of service and quality. British Airways once had a certain swagger and presence but it increasingly feels like it has little more than a walk-on part in global aviation. My most recent flight on Qantas was sub-par, as was its public relations performance last weekend. Never mind the spats between unions and management that have become the main public narrative for the two airlines for the past decade or so, the bigger issue, from a brand perspective, is the total evaporation of charm.

As companies across a host of sectors struggle with trimming costs while attempting to maintain decent levels of service, it’s unlikely that the word “charm” crops up in any Powerpoint presentations about “customer experience”, “passenger journeys” (this is a favourite term – what the hell else is a passenger doing?!) and “guest engagement”. From hotels to airlines, supermarkets to rail services, department stores to restaurants, the consumer in most corners of the world is less than charmed at the moment. The modern consumer might shop in cool department stores, dine at chic restaurants, sleep in designer hotels and get automated recognition but they’re certainly not being charmed.

I’m not sure when I started saying it, but increasingly I leave shops, enter restaurants, board flights or visit websites and quietly utter “charmless”. This little indictment means I’m unlikely to ever revisit, let alone recommend it to a friend or colleague. What’s more startling is that charmlessness is not only tolerated but has become a defining characteristic of companies, cities and nations that many have been all too quick to celebrate.

Start making a list of recent charming experiences versus charmless ones and you’ll soon find an endless list of the latter – 99 per cent of tech devices, 98.5 per cent of airlines, 98 per cent of new cars, 97.5 per cent of hotels (the worst offenders being classic hotels that try to find their youth through the most inappropriate renovation), 96 per cent of the Gulf states, 92.5 per cent of retail and on it goes.

Small surprise that once you strip out the elements that make a business charming (original fixtures, vintage staff, real voices rather than automated ones, crafted logos versus computer-generated versions) you’ll soon have to spend great sums trying to recover all those things that were quite easy to slash from the balance sheet but are near impossible to restore.

Many a company is now in this very position – trying to create the impression that they’re there to serve, or re-writing their corporate histories: trying to find cosy roots and elaborate customer tales that were either deleted after the first generation sold the business or after the first round of Texas Instrument-wielding consultants came in on their wave of efficiencies.

Could it be time for the charm school to make a return? Rather than spending £30,000-plus for a stint at Wharton, why not spend far less learning to be a chief executive who understands the importance of patina, texture, conversation and the value of keeping sweet old dears on the payroll because they remember names, can recite company history and, above all, are true loyalists?

I want airline bosses to look like, sound like and live the brand. When Qantas’s chief executive stood in front of the world’s media to tell investors first and passengers second that his airline would soon take flight again, I couldn’t have been less convinced. The planes might have rumbled into the skies but the spirit of Australia felt like it was parked at the gate.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine

tyler.brule@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/brule