With United Airlines posting heavy losses this quarter while its competitors reported healthy profits, the blame game has begun to escalate. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” no longer seems to be working, as CEO Jeff Smisek is now on the hot seat for the way he has guided United during his 3+ year tenure.
A piece in the Huffington Post by David Fagin entitled “Why United’s Jeff Smisek Is the Worst CEO in the Business” makes the argument that the key ingredient to a successful business is trust and passengers don’t trust United anymore.
I’d say that is rather non-controversial argument to those who fly United often and we need only look around us to see that investors do not trust United anymore, regular passengers do not trust United anymore, and United employees do no trust their leaders. That last element is perhaps the most damning, because United’s front-line staff is critical for United to win back customers.
And yet even that is not enough. One UA FA wrote the following–
If you went down to the MX shop and took away their tools, how effective would they be at fixing the planes? Likewise, when you remove the resources for providing a good customer experience, how effective will your frontline personnel be? You can’t “fake” a blanket for someone who’s cold, or “pretend” a meal for someone who’s hungry.
How very true.
I do not have a magic solution for United, but here are five brief tips on this beautiful Sunday afternoon for regaining customer trust–
- If you say you are going to rapidly install wi-fi, rapidly install wi-fi
- If you say a flight will have meals available for purchase, ensure that there are meals available for purchase
- If scheduled departure time is in 30 minutes and the aircraft is not even on the ground yet, let people know the flight will be delayed and provide frequent updates, even if just to announce status quo
- Do not even think about further cutting back the MileagePlus program or going to a wholly revenue-based program in 2015
- Train your flight attendants to address every premium class passenger by name during every onboard interaction and that the conclusion of meal service does not mean gab time, it means drink time, as in you need to monitor the cabin every 2-3 minutes for anyone who might need a refill
There are a lot more where that came from, but these modest tips above require no additional monetary outlay and would go a long way toward starting to rebuild lost trust, particularly among those disgruntled travelers who are strongly considering a defection to American Airlines or Delta. And without them, the “all-important” institutional investors will not make their money back and also be unhappy.
Great points, though 4 should be number 1. 😉
I doubt that they are reading…or listening…or caring. All that’s important to UA at the moment is providing some (minimal) return to institutional investors.
I’m no fan of UA management — I’d fire Smisek and give somebody else a shot at this point — but, honestly, whether passengers “trust” the airline is pretty much irrelevant to profitability. I mean, does ANYBODY trust Spirit? Of course not. Yet they’re making lots of money. The issue is managerial competency, not trust.
@iahphx: I hear your point, but don’t you see managerial competency and trust as inextricably linked? How can Untied win customers if no one trusts United? That is directly tied to profitability.
Didn’t see you at the Freddies this year. Were you there?
For me it would take more than just correcting the five points you list. Where already to the point where that would be too little too late.
When I’ve heard candid statements from corporate executives, one thing they love to rag on are “industry standards”. This is often in a bad way. In that if bad customer service is a standard, then they think it’s ok if they’re at the same level. A standard can either be high or the lowest common denominator.
Like some landlords and banks I’ve had, they often carefully calculate to the penny what they can dump upon you before it’s painful enough for you to leave. Sure, run to American or Delta. American is a mess. For me, Delta doesn’t service the routes I need.
I hate it when someone says that good customer service shouldn’t cost anything more. It implies that the efforts of a good service employee are the same as a bad service employee so why reward the former with more money? In theory in capitalism, good service and product translates into a feedback loop for the better employees to be recognized by management. In reality, like in the film Office Space, a successful employee is one who does enough work (including customer service) to keep out of trouble and pleases management. I had a director get enraged when I pointed that out. The fact is that he’s the worst example of such behavior and didn’t like being called out.
Want to fix things? Keep notes on every trip. Which employee was good and which employee was bad. Email customer service weekly with your observations. This will go on their reviews. Don’t trust management to do this on their own.
Please give up on this being addressed by name fetish you seem to have. I agree with all your other points. You are a frequent flyer, not a king. Does it really have that big of an impact on your self asteem to be referred to a Mr….”….” I mean come on.
Case in point; I stopped flying United 2yrs ago because I stopped trusting them to get me to my destination in the same day, or even reserve my seat or itinerary.
AA has not lost a single itinerary, nor has ever been more than 2hrs late on any of my flights since 2013. I trust AA based on evidence.
And I seriously don’t trust UA to ever do what they say anymore.
Sad. My husband is a UA (subCO) mid-level long time employee. I am a 1K MileagePlus member, and pre-merger a Platinum OnePass member, and pre-Worldperks/OnePass merger a Continental Gold member. This goes back over 16 years. And all that earned the hard way: primarily domestic.
Legacy United was an airlined in failure. Incompetent senior management team. Horrible old, ill-maintained equipment fleet-wide, completely demoralized staff very unionized with extremely restrictive work rules and NO motivation to provide any incremental service within any functional area.
Legacy Continetal was a relatively well run airline. Highly competent senior management team. Modern, well-maintaned equipment, very motiviated staff partially unionized and those with collective bargaining rights had quite basic and flexible work rules.
For whatever reason (and we will problably never know), the post merger Board and/or management team chose, for the most part, to move the team to Chicago (which meant many CO folks left), take on the legacy UA policies, procedures, operations, toxic culture, and restrictive union attitude front line, maintenance, and inflight service. In short, Smisek and the Board made the horrific strategic decision – unless politically they were forced to – to largely disregard the relatively successful legacy CO culture and business management model, and go with that of the relatively failed UA model.
And therefore, what we have now is the New CO/UA company being run….well….for the most part pretty much as the old legacy United Airlines was run.
Except current management has taken that failed model and culture, and made it worse by:
1) degrading inflight service. There is NO doubt about this and yes, it’s very bad. If anyone would like hundreds of examples, just ask.
2) degrading its frequent flyer program. Again, there is NO doubt and if you want dozens of examples, just ask.
3) degrading its fleet maintenance. Video either a) being taken out, b) left over from 1986, or c) not available at all when coming out of Boeing.
4) degrading customer confidence. Promise stuff (meals, wifi, service, cleanliness, etc.) that simply DO NOT OCCCUR.
5) degarding investor confidence.
Look: all the horrible interiors are sub UA interiors. the horrible trip reports are, for the most part, trip reports with sub UA crews on sub UA equip. And for SHARES:
There’s nothing WRONG with SHARES. SHARES has been running – successfully and really quite easily – Continental for many many years. Not to mention USAir and others as well. SHARES is a completely acceptable reservation, cargo, revnue, ticketing, and special purpose system. The problem is that Smisek and his largely United team a) progressed way too fast with the implementation of SHARES system-wide, b) did not provide the time or resources NEARLY adequate for such a worldwide rollout or training, either in the stations, at the res centers, or at the help desks (which had to staff up big time and had inadequate time to do so).
Bottom line. CO went with UA’s culture, management team, policies and procedures. And as long as sub UA’s culture, management team, policies and procedures are allowed to remain “the way”, success at the new UA is very hard to imagine.
iahphx: I’m not so sure about that. I do trust Spirit as they are incredibly honest about their motives, how things work, and that they don’t care if you fly another airline. No pretense at all. People who fly Spirit know what they are getting and Spirit delivers what it promises. They don’t pretend and they don’t mislead. (Not my choice of airline because I don’t like what they offer for all the reasons you would give.)
@Jimbo: Let’s put aside my “fetish” for a moment. It’s in the FARs. They are not following their bargained for rules when they do not address passengers by name.
@PolishKnight: Don’t you think the reward for good service via direct bonus is unreasonable (I am certainly not going to send in emails after every flight and note down the names of the “good” and “bad” FAs)? But, good service does lead to return business, fuller planes, better financial numbers, and higher stock prices, which eventually lead to higher wages for employees and more benefits (more lucrative stock options). The failed trickle down approach? I just don’t see another way.
@Arun: Very good point, RE: Spirit
Re #5: They could call me anything, if they could just do numbers 1-4 and checked for drink refills every 10 minutes.
Replying to #9.
Are you kidding me? Continental failed procedures and policies are what the new United have been forced down the employees throats and the Continental IT department are so inept it is pathetic. Your CEO is having his a>> handed to him by every other CEO in the business. It is time to get rid of him and every member of the Board of Directors. Institutional investors have been taking notice and it is definitely time to clear house and get fresh people in that know how to actually run an airline and value the employess who which support the airline on their backs.