As United Airlines seeks to raise its Net Promoter score, pilots have been tasked with communicating more clearly and focusing on the customer experience.
United Airlines To Pilots: Focus On Customer Experience
In a memo to pilots shared with Live and Let’s Fly, United asks pilots to continually engage and turn “lemons into lemonade” though frequent communication:
While safety will always be at the forefront of everything we do at United, I want to also ask for your focus on another important area – the customer experience. Your care and engagement when things don’t go as planned has a tremendous impact on our customers’ overall journey. Many of the compliments they share with us have a common theme – their negative experience turned into a positive one entirely because of a pilot who communicated and connected with them. There are many examples of this…and each is a reminder that we have a unique opportunity to make a difference for every customer, every flight, every day, regardless of any challenges we may face.
Ask yourself this: what upsets you most during a delay? Is it the delay itself or the lack of communication? Forget ordering pizza for the plane, just think how much it helps when a captain walks out of the flight deck, picks up the microphone, and addresses the cabin with an empathic update.
At least for me, the anger dissipates…even if it means a missed connection or severely delayed arrival.
What heartened me is that the memo was not just United preaching to its pilots, but fellow pilots speaking to one another on how to better communicate. For example, one pilot suggested:
- Add a warm welcome from the crew
- speak more slowly
- try to limit aviation acronyms
- add in something cool about the flight or aircraft
- mix in a little levity
- share points of interest
- invite kids to the flight deck post-flight
- Be your genuine and authentic
He further added two challenges:
- Challenge yourself to create a new but meaningful customer engagement experience that you will
deliver to one or two passengers every flight, time permitting. - Make a thoughtful and honest PA in front of customers during IRROPS and acknowledge folks
on special days (veterans on Memorial Day, moms on Mother’s Day, etc.)
Pilots have also been invited to collaborate amongst each other on how to improve customer service. Again, this is pilots speaking to pilots, not management making demands.
And this, folks, is how the culture of an airline is transformed.
I look back on my 17 years of flying United (well over one million miles) and I still have the notes from pilots, like Captain Denny Flanagan or Joe Yanacek. I cannot emphasize how much those personal interactions with pilots have made me loyal to United over the years (and consequently spent tens of thousands of dollars personally and directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending on United).
CONCLUSION
It really makes me smile to see that pilots at United are thinking so carefully about customer service. As the summer travel season is now upon us and planes are full again, now is the time we’ll see if those words are put into action.
Have you been surprised and delighted recently by a United Airlines pilot?
image: United Airlines
My single biggest annoyance with pilots: lack of communication.
Just be prompt and honest with us about delays.
If you say 10-15min then get back on the PA in 10-15min, not 30min.
If you think it’s going to be a long delay…just tell us.
I had 2 different pilots on 2 separate flights thank me for being a frequent flier in 2021, Only the 3rd and 4th time that’s ever happened to me in 20+ years on UA, I appreciated it.
I read the link about the note from Captain Joe and “A Love Affair with United Airlines”.
I, too, really liked United. The death blow was when the Tulip (UA or U in red/blue) was killed off. I know it’s not logical but that seemed to be like the end of the real United. They should have kept it even like Air France kept the flying shrimp or whatever that thing is. Now I feel like I’m really flying Continental, which is not the worse in the world.
I don’t need a lot of chatter. However, if there is no AVOD, a description of the cruising altitude is appreciated. I also like to be referred to as passengers, not customers, and to be thanked for flying with us, not “thank you for your business”, though these are just minor preferences.
I think this is good advice for the flight crew. I do not like long announcements either, but just a little something to make the crew seem personable and welcoming is wise. The less robotic, the better. I still have some of the business cards from United, little thank you notes. My favorite was on a flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, the pilot spoke German, and he therefore made his own announcements in both languages.
BA puts great emphasis into flight deck announcements: the tone, level of enthusiasm, and awareness. Yeah, they can be chatty, but a warm and inviting voice from the flight deck can help crew and passengers set the tone for the flight.
It seems that pilots only interact with passengers when something is wrong: a rule is broken and the captain is summoned. It is such a relief when the flight deck crew say hello at the gate, greet babies or the elderly, say hi to animals… it is memorable and meaningful.
From a United pilot? Even as Global Services, never happened. Customer Service, try another airline.
it’s the little things, (and of course the big ones too).
The number 1 thing besides not crashing that pilots can do to improve my engagement is turn on channel 9 / from the cockpit. And UA should provide the technology to make it available over WiFi on planes without in seat audio.
I know both Denny and Joe. Both are top notch pilots.
Hi. I’m a former (retired) ex-CAL “legacy”. pilot I didn’t go thru the UAL merger but I saw it coming. I am not “proud” to say that in my final years I had grown disgruntled. And kept cabin P/As brief and terse. When I travel as PAX in the cabin now? I cringe at long-winded self-righteous P/As from the cockpit. But this?
t Just know ONE thing? I know the training that I received and United/ex-CAL are top notch.
A sensible and fairly typical move by Kirby, with better communication being a free way to make incremental improvements.
I always keep notes from UA team members. Was especially happy to receive a business card and note from the pilot on my first flight in April of this year following a 13 month absence due to the pandemic. It was a great touch and one I’ll always remember.
Admit the eye-roll from my wife was even better though when the FA gave it to me mid flight!
I’d love to see the pilots be much more cognizant of the seat belt sign. Use it only as required for actual passenger safety rather than FA convenience.
I don’t think pilot interaction can even come close to offsetting the poor FA service and poor quality of food and beverage on board that is the hallmark of UA.
Give them about 3-4 hours at a ticket counter with (some) debating, argumentative, late passengers grousing about bag weights, fees, charges, seat assignments, etc. and we’ll see how engaging they would be.