Ryanair promises to 'piss people off' less, but can't resist dig at survey deriding its customer service
Controversial Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has told the company's annual general meeting that the budget airline should "try to eliminate things that unnecessarily piss people off".
In a marked change of tack for a brand that has become infamous for its aversion to customer service, O'Leary pledged to stop fining passengers who narrowly exceed the carrier's strict baggage size allowance and introduce a new website and team to respond to customers' email complaints.
Speaking at the firm's AGM in Dublin yesterday, O'Leary said: "A lot of those customer services elements don’t cost a lot of money… It’s something we are committed to addressing over the coming year."
This from the man who once memorably declared: "People say the customer is always right, but you know what - they're not."
O'Leary's volte face came as the company was voted as having the worst customer service out of Britain's 100 biggest brands in a survey conducted by Which?, the consumer magazine.
But while O'Leary's attitude to customers may have softened, the company is evidently not yet willing to surrender its no-nonsense way of dealing with public relations judging by its response to the Which findings.
The company this morning posted a statement on its Twitter feed dismissing Which's "useless survey of 3,300 people, including their pet hamsters, gerbils and goldfish".
Ryanair's Robin Kiely said: "We surveyed over 3m passengers on the Ryanair website last night - only two of them had ever heard of Which and none of them had ever bought or read it."