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Brand-Buster: United Airlines
Just hearing her voice, I could imagine Julie’s laugh lines extending, spoke-like, from her mouth as I spoke with her this morning from Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. Julie is a Customer Service Agent working for United Airlines in what must be the most horrific of assignments: the Lost and Delayed Baggage Department. Julie seemed pretty good at what she does. She's a straight shooter. She tries hard and she's got a tough job to do.
It had been nearly 52 hours since I placed my suitcase in the care of United Airlines at Dulles International Airport for my first flight leg to Chicago, before connecting on to Ottawa. Unfortunately, United should have had my bag in its custody for only about 5 hours, but my delayed outbound flight made the connection too tight for my luggage to accompany my person onto Flight 7610. I traveled to Ottawa. My bag didn’t. I guess it was my turn. My luggage and I are rarely separated, so I haven’t had to go through this for awhile.
A delayed bag is no mortal sin for an airline. It happens. Given how many bags are handled every day, it's a miracle it doesn't happen more often.
My call to Julie was the third I’d placed over the last 24 hours. Prior to speaking to Julie, I’d spoken to Vicki and to Lateisha. Each of them were professional and efficient, even warm and human. They were all sympathetic, which in this world of burgeoning natural, religio-political, and man-made disasters is probably extravagant and unwarranted. But I appreciated it nonetheless. United has some wonderful, dedicated, and relentlessly optimistic people working there. I think they have to be that way in order to stand to take direction from the empty-headed suits at United’s corporate headquarters.
I am convinced that United’s senior management are not only clueless, they’re clueless that they’re clueless – especially the people who make marketing and customer relations decisions. If they simply used, or tested, their own systems they’d understand why the United Airlines brand has become a poster child for airline bankruptcy. Not that United is lonely in this category. They have plenty of company, but when United should be a category leader in demonstrating how to recover from bankruptcy and return to their former glory, their management continues to make bone-headed decisions that seem designed to ensure their continuing insolvency.
When you phone United’s toll-free baggage number, your inquiry is answered by one of these so-called intelligent speech-activated computer systems. In some ways, these systems are decidedly more advantageous than are real people. They don’t require food, water, salaries, or bathroom breaks. You don’t have to pay motivational speakers to get them to answer calls – and in the Delayed and Lost Baggage Department, where exasperated and short-tempered people in dirty underwear can be expected to call, this is no small feat.
Unlike human workers, these androidal answerers don't require annual performance reviews. United’s marketing people obviously were sold by this feature, because I am convinced that they have never checked to see whether this system actually performs. In management's defense, they've had some tough labor issues to deal with. And when labor relations have historically been a font of heartbreak and teeth-gnashing, one can sort of understand why United's management is trying to eliminate the source of their labor relations problems: people.
As I have implied with no small degree of subtlety, United's system doesn’t work. During each of my calls, the computer "compassionately" reported that my bag was not delayed, it was lost – an opinion that Julie, Lateisha, and Vicki subsequently impeached. It also sought to reassure me – most unsuccessfully – that a priority trace had been issued. I suspect that my luggage is being tracked with the same technology being employed to locate Osama Bin Laden.
After spending between seven and ten minutes per call trying to get the system to recognize my speech, I would finally be released to speak to an agent. But before this sweet succor, I would be required to wait an additional 23 to 25 minutes per call. A different computer voice system stepped in for the old one. Unlike the previous system, the new system was not incompetent, just disingenuous.
With the regularity of a rocking, chanting Hari Krishna, this new system reminded me how valued I am as a United customer. The machine implored me to recognize just how much United values my business and my patience. Right. That’s why I was forced to wait for hours. United values me. Values my patience. Well, the computer is right about one thing. If one uses the laws of supply and demand to determine value, given the negligible patience I feel for United Airlines, its value is probably extraordinary.
I speak from long experience with United, having once been an Executive Premier flyer. While this customer status does not evoke the Uriah Heepish sucking-up that the legendary 1K status produces, it does help one along towards being treated as a valued customer. I had to subject myself to over 75,000 nautical miles per year in a United aircraft to earn this status, so I spent a lot of time strapped into an aluminum tube hurtling through the stratosphere imbibing caffeinated beverages. It only took one extraordinarily rude and cynical customer service agent in San Francisco to alienate me some 7 years ago but that's another story.
It is only recently that I decided to give United another shot, mostly as a result of an occasional very good service experience I would have with their flight attendants and gate personnel. At this point, I know I’ll be forced to travel with them again. Sometimes there are no other choices, but I doubt I’ll choose United again when I have a choice.
United has a broken brand. As damaged as the brand is, United’s management is damaging it further. There are some brand touchpoints – and lost baggage is decidedly one of them – where people, not technology, can make the difference. Does this insight require an advanced business degree? I don’t think so. I suspect that United has plenty of management with advanced business education pedigrees. What it doesn’t have are managers with common sense about people and how vulnerable they feel when they are away from home.
There’s an old maxim in the service business. People who like your service will tell a couple of people. People who have a problem with you will tell 20 others. Things have changed.
Today, when consumers are passionate about service and evangelistic in their behaviors – as I am – they’ll tell thousands. That’s what I’m doing now, and that's what I'll be doing in the brand-building and brand-busting part of my blog. There's nothing like the vivid example of a personal, current, and real experience to drive home a lesson about what it takes to build or bust a brand.
Brands are built or busted one customer at a time. As much as I love United's current advertising campaign using paper puppets that fight dragons - and I think it is amazing - it is impossible for United to spend enough money advertising to overcome just how abandoned, uncared for, and disrespected I feel as a customer. I'd much rather that United had spent that advertising money on people who would get my bag to me. I'm not alone without luggage either. An Air Canada rep reported this morning some 500 accumulated delayed bags at the Ottawa airport as of this morning. There are a lot of people here in Ottawa yearning for clean underwear.
Frankly, given how United is managing its customer relations, I am very concerned for the jobs of its many dedicated employees. I can’t help but care about Julie, Vicki, Lateisha, and the thousands of other hard-working United employees who work hard, deserve rewarding employment, and care about their customers.
It’s hard for me to imagine a very bright future for a service company that puts systems like this in place. It's too bad. I once just loved United Airlines. No more.
Posted on February 19, 2006 05:58 PM | Permalink
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