Shiv Helping a Customer

Nerinda was so grateful that she popped round to our house to thank me in person! Nerinda’s Mum, Mama Kom, lives in the house behind her in the picture, next door but one to us. Both Nerinda and her Mum are dear friends who attend Shiv’s Ladies’ Fellowship group.

This week my dear friend and neighbour, Nerinda, called me. She’d been stuck in Vanimo, on PNG’s north coast, for 2 weeks and had been unable to get a flight home to Telefomin. She asked me to help get her seat confirmed.

Nerinda works for the Local Government in Telefomin, in Works & Services. She’s a part of the team we have been talking to about getting the runway repaired.

She flew to Vanimo a couple of weeks ago in order to attend meetings at the Provincial Government Head Offices. Her department had paid MAF several thousand Kina for flights for their staff early in the year, but unfortunately they did not have an account with MAF and it was very difficult for the Base Staff in Vanimo to confirm how much money was left from the payment because our cell phone reception around the country is sadly not great, making phone calls to our Head Quarters very challenging.

Sadly, Nerinda had a similar problem booking a flight for one of her colleagues last month. She reached out to me and I was able to contact our Finance Department via email and confirm the payment amount. As I had already helped her with one flight, she called me again and I was able to confirm that her booking details were in the system and put her payment information in, which confirmed her flight.

All of our processes for planning flights and booking passengers is online, just like any professional airline. We are very blessed to have StarLink in our major bases to ensure we can access all the online information. This is straightforward for Ryan & I who have been using computers for most of our lives. For the majority of our Base Staff, daily computer usage is still relatively new, and figuring out how to solve problems with them can be challenging and frustrating. MAF is trying really hard to provide continual training to help our Base Staff do a better job and provide improved customer service but it is a constant challenge.

This is how I often end up stepping in and solving little problems, like for Nerinda, or helping our Base Staff with an unfamiliar computer processes. It’s plugging little gaps, and helping solve little problems which is great to do, especially when I hear “thank you so much” in the end!