In a time when all airlines are seeking ways to gain passengers and their loyalty, Lufthansa is taking an approach like no other. Simply put, if you don’t like something about your flight—the late departure/arrival, uncomfortable seats, hot meals that weren’t hot, or anything else you care to complain about—Lufthansa wants to know about it.

This approach isn’t to let you vent so that you’ll feel better. Lufthansa takes every complaint and enters it into a database. The database, Oracle 9i, supports Lufthansa’s COSMIC project—Customer Oriented Service Management Improvement in the Cabin. In any given month, Lufthansa employees enter 6,000 to 7,000 complaints about arrival/departure, boarding, meals, and other aspects of in-flight service. The system tracks such a level of detail that a complaint can even be recorded for a portion of food (e.g., your bread or meat) that you didn’t feel was sufficient in size.

That many complaints may seem high, but consider that Lufthansa uses 14,000 cabin attendants to fly 45 million passengers each year to 350 different destinations in 94 countries. That means Lufthansa receives and records only one complaint per 650 passengers. That’s good, but not good enough for Lufthansa.

Lufthansa uses Oracle’s Discoverer data-mining tools to carefully sift through all the complaints. Lufthansa can easily categorize complaints by each outsourcing caterer. It uses that information to impose penalties on caterers who continually provide substandard food and beverages.

The Discoverer tool set has allowed Lufthansa to cut the time spent handling customer complaints by an amazing 70 percent. That not only saves money, but also increases customer loyalty and retention. Lufthansa plans to create satellite links between its in-flight planes and the home office, which will allow cabin attendants to enter complaints on board a flight and have the complaints immediately analyzed.

Customer service is about providing exceptional service. But it’s also about rectifying customer complaints. Using databases and tool sets that allow you to sift through and organize customer complaints, your organization can gain a competitive advantage, just like Lufthansa.