Being A United Customer Is Scary, Imagine Working There
For some reason we think some industries are “good” and others are “bad.” We might say the tobacco industry, the gambling industry-they are corrupt. Some industries like these are seen as money hungry, purely focused on profits, on operational efficiencies no matter the cost. But historically we don’t hear that the airline industry is one of the most corrupt industries. However it feels like that is changing thanks to United Airlines and its PR problems.
Sit on a United flight and you are greeted with an upbeat and entertaining welcome video. United employees and guest celebrities smile as they are filmed across the world, joyful about one thing; flying. However we know this utopian view is not the experience most customers have while flying. In reality we know that flying, for many of us, conjures deep stress, fears and worries.
Many years ago we heard about United Breaks Guitars. It was the video in every customer service speaker's presentation. We later moved on, but United didn't. Despite efforts to improve customer experience, clearly not much as changed in their culture. You can learn everything you need to know about the employee experience by looking at the customer experience, so perhaps the employee experience is terrible.
That Video
We've all watched that horrifying United video. It's upsetting because a man is being dragged off a plane against his will, his face is bloody, his fellow passengers shouting in disgust “My God! What are you doing?”
Jeff Potter, CEO of Surf Air, a California-based airline that offers unlimited flights for a monthly fee, wonders how it escalated to this point. Why in the world was this not handled before customers boarded the aircraft? He said that creating a scene once the passengers boarded the plane was a terrible idea. It should never have gotten to that point. According to Potter airline Delta does a better job with service recovery. Delta offers American Express cards and they continually raise the dollar amount of the card if no one takes it. But at United, they didn't want to go above $800 for customer vouchers. Were the employees afraid to do so? And clearly now the cost of this incident will be much higher than what it would have cost them in vouchers that day. Once those customers boarded that plane, it became a perfect storm.
This isn’t the first time an episode on a flight or at the airport has gone viral for United. Just a few weeks ago United was blasted for not letting three women on a flight because they were wearing yoga pants. Why does this keep happening?
I always say that the customer experience will tell you everything you need to know about the employee experience.
When you go up to the front desk at an airline, and there’s a problem with a flight, you’re generally greeted by someone holding their finger up to motion “one minute,” while they hold the phone up to their ear with their shoulder and furiously type into a computer. So what are they doing? The staff is contacting corporate headquarters to arrange service recovery and incentives. They can’t authorize these incentives without the go ahead from corporate. But often the people working at the airline on the ground can’t get a hold of the people working at headquarters. Ironically it’s the same frustration many of us have when we contact customer service - we can’t get anyone on the phone!
It's not just the employee experience in dealing with customer issues, it's much bigger than that. My husband Jacob Morgan created an employee experience index of 252 global companies looking at how good they are at designing employee experiences which is a combination of culture, technology and physical space. In looking at the research United scored poorest in employees feeling valued. Additionally employees didn't feel like their managers acted like coaches or mentors.
What happened last weekend had a lot of factors--and articles abound sharing details of every aspect of the story. Some say the customer was a terrible person. However the details of this customer’s personal life don’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if the guy was Bernie Madoff or Mother Theresa. You can’t physically remove a customer in the way those security guards did. And don't let United blame their vendor. It doesn't matter if security was United staff or not. They are working on behalf of United, so that moment they are the face of United Airlines.
Why aren’t United staff educated on long-term outcomes. It’s like the staff have blinders on, only focused on this exact moment in time, with no thought of how this incident---blasted through social media, will appear to the world. I’m always shocked by the lack of self-consciousness displayed by United staff when things get heated, and customers are frustrated. They often appear to me to be completely on the defense. Customers are the offenders, and they--United staff--must defend themselves. So I believe this is what is being modeled at the top of the company. What is sad is this is not everyone. In fact, my husband and I took a flight last week. A pilot had a seat next to us--he wasn't working. He overheard my husband talk about how much he enjoyed listening to channel 9, to enjoy the pilots' chatter. The pilot showed my husband his tablet, flight map and flight patterns. My husband was a kid in the candy store, so excited to talk to a real pilot! I have had my own amazing experiences on United. I love when I get flight attendants who seem fresh - who are happy to see me - who give me silly compliments, "Hey! Love that bag!" But we can all tell when staff are overworked, overburdened. We know the purchasing systems for the airlines are complicated. If seats are left empty the airline loses money--so many seats are oversold, and as a result, customers are kicked off the flights. At the end of the day it is all about quarterly profits. It always is.
Will United join the ranks of the world's most hated companies? Will people start to view them as just plain old corrupt, greedy, like an Epipen? How many customer offenses does it take to down a brand especially one one that has such a monopoly on the skies?
Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker and author. Sign up for her weekly newsletter here.