United Airlines 6 Disciplines – Part 1
The Business School | Centennial College
Customer Experience Design
MKTG 731 – 003
Professor:
James Brian Walsh
Weakness
The strategy of customer promise being broken employed by United Airlines (UA), in regards to its Public Relations, was a type of weakness as we can see from the “United Breaks Guitars” article. This is because when the musician whose guitar was broken asked the frontline employees about his guitar, they were “indifferent” and the final say from their Head Office was a “no”, for his broken guitar claim. The bottom line here is the UA’s Mission would be impossible to regenerate in the public perception, because of the mess United Airlines employees made to their consumer confidence reputation.
Besides, the timing of this musician’s viral music video is too coincidental during a vulnerable point in the stock price to UA shares because it seems it was another blow to their reputation and market valuation as soon as his video went viral. The logic for an effective CX Strategy being impossible to be implemented is because the top-level management personnel failed to cascade, and ensure client-facing employees were aware of their responsibilities to customers.
Everyone from the security guards and other Partners such as retail staff, in addition to employees like flight attendants, play a role in UA’s ecosystem being a weakness. Numerous incidents like a Doctor being dragged away from his seat and suffering a bleeding type injury affect UA’s reputation. Furthermore, a famous rapper’s dog mistakenly being sent to Chicago instead of Burbank, California, because the parcel-delivery staff not only sent his dog to the wrong city they handed him a dog that wasn’t his.
A definite weakness in this UA case was when a flight attendant told a baby’s mother that the UA policy does not allow babies to cry longer than five minutes. It must have been excruciating for the mother to have to endure trying to get her baby to stop crying, knowing eventually he or she would cry again who knows for how long after. It would be the most unenjoyable experience for any parent. It must have been hard for the mother to accept that UA was once apparently a reputable airline to do business with. The mother, as a passenger did not have her needs met in any way because she was degraded by having to make her baby stop crying.
The frontline employees also broke the most significant rule in our society, customer experience related or not: The Golden Rule ‘Respect’. They did not honour the mother’s parenting duties making that incident a total lack of respect for a newborn child.
Additionally, we see in the United Airlines case another weakness is them not being caring and efficient whatsoever in plenty of their front-page news incidents which have occurred over the years. A total disregard for compassion was their weakness in not caring when a UA employee shoved an elderly customer to the ground because it would be appalling even to see someone do this to an older person, let alone to experience it as a customer. There was a fatal occasion that occurred when a beloved pet dog of a passenger died when it was put in the overhead compartment where it should not have been placed.
UA’s case is particularly interesting because UA is a top US airline has an expected high level of customer service. Their lack of empathy, incompetent delivery and dysfunctional ecosystem contradict the expectation that they are a reputable business. For instance, a baby was left in their mother’s arms for 4 hours on the tarmac leading the mother to believe he or she would die in her arms, just before the baby was hospitalized because of the prolonged tarmac delay.
On the other hand, in terms of customer understanding, the company failed in understanding customer needs and wants. The reactions of employees to the situations were completely dissatisfied customers. They did not put themselves in the customer’s shoes to see what the customers truly want to be rectified. This was shown when the staff told the mom that her baby is not allowed to cry more than five minutes inflight. She had no empathy in this situation which made the mom become so angry, disappointed and also had a bad point of view about the company. Also, the issues happening with Dr David Dao, two young girls wearing leggings, or the death of animals all reflected that the company’s operations were opposite to the brand promise which is “Fly the Friendly Skies”.
As well as this, the UA’s employees did not handle customer’s complaints properly. Instead, they argued and blamed on the customers, which is not acceptable in the service field. The way they addressed the problem of the professor couple because of their operation mistake by kicking them off a late-night flight was so terrible and should be criticized. They ignored the voice of customers and acted as they have authority to treat customers like that. Also, in the case of a guitar artist, the mistake in giving proper compensation to customer resulted in particular damage is not only the brand image but also a huge of money.
Overall, the lack of customer understanding was generated from the gaps in service experience marketing in which the primary responsibility belongs to leadership. The company has poor management and employee feedback mechanisms. They failed in engaging, training, and motivating their staff adequately. They were unable to match three components, including the brand promise, expectation, and perception.
For design and delivery, the company failed in giving functional utility in the cases of selling a toddler’s seat to a passenger on standby, duplicating the professor’s seat, or sending the animal to the wrong place. They had problems with providing customers with the best service and fulfilling customer satisfaction. These mistakes reflected the lack of empathy in creating a service that leads to bad customer experience. Also, the company did not do well in giving emotional connection to customers. It was shown in the situations of introducing primary economy tickets which places more restriction on passengers, preventing two young girls getting on the plane because they wore leggings. In addition to this, the company failed to apologize to customers in the cases of a baby crying, a broken guitar, or Dr David Dao.
Corrective Action
A possible remedy to the public relations disaster would have been to offer a Gibson Les Paul 1970s vintage electric guitar to the passenger, as an apologetic gesture. Doing this instead of declining to make amends with this passenger, would have saved this airline corporation, possibly millions of dollars. The suggested resolution is a method that almost no corporation would be able to apply. There is no way in the world that United Airlines is willing to throw their entire airline’s top-level management personnel to the curb because of all these negative publicities.
The next step for UA here is to find a way for these customers to re-engage instead of abandoning UA. They should immediately issue a press release or press conference issuing a public apology to the doctor at the very least. A UA policy change needs to be applied for the transportation of essential UA employees so that they will not be disruptive to UA’s operations.
I believe an entire culture shift around the understanding of parenting obligations needs to be addressed by UA, before trying to come up with a solution to problems such as these. However, it could be possible that a small written but preferably in-person apology, from a top-level executive, in addition to a one-year duration of free flights by UA for a maximum of 8 to 10 free flights to this family, could be the answer here. Aside from this remedy would be the step of UA revisiting their rule book to ensure no similar incidents occur ever again.
A huge part of corporate emotional intelligence is indeed the most valued yet understated rule: respect. UA needs to have an entire company-wide training in place to reinforce the importance of The Golden Rule (respect) to all its employees, thereby growing into a UA disciplined work culture, instead of shrinking into a cautionary tale in the field of customer relations.
There is no way in the world that this passenger’s beloved pet could be brought back to life. A possible resolution here would be for one of the top-level executives to hand-deliver a puppy of the same breed to the passenger’s home and the executive making an in-person public apology because it’s the small things that count in life.
Furthermore, To console a worried mother from a possibly fatal situation, the in-flight staff could have extended hospitality by moving them to a better area within the aeroplane.
To better understand customer needs and wants, the company should set not only effective policies and procedures but also create clear and authoritative guidelines that help employees how to deal with tough and unforeseen cases. To raise employee’s emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills, the leaders have to treat staff respectfully as the way they treat their customers, give more power and belief for workers to handle certain situations. The employees, by themselves, have to learn effective communication skills to face with customer’s complaints, reduce their anger, and get the moment of truth.
Moreover, the company should redesign its system to make sure that these mistakes will never happen again. They have to consider a human-centred design which brings customers desirability, feasibility, and viability. The company should implement surveys and campaigns to get customer’s feedback and recommendations to create the service which fulfil customer’s requirements.
References
Goldstein, M. (2019, September 13). United Airlines Kicks Retired Professors Off Late-Night Flight. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2019/09/12/united-airlines-kicks-elderly-couple-off-late-night-flight/#6aafa1396639
Holly Yan, Christina Zdanowicz and Emanuella Grinberg, CNN. (2018, April 10). Backlash erupts after United passenger gets yanked off overbooked flight. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/11/travel/united-customer-dragged-off-overbooked-flight/index.html
Josephs, L. (2018, March 21). United Airlines: Profitable but plagued by public relations disasters. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/united-profitable-but-plagued-by-public-relations-disasters.html
Matousek, M. (2018, March 16). United Airlines has a long history of infuriating customers — here are its worst customer service incidents. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/united-airlines-worst-customer-service-incidents-2018-3#when-its-passengers-became-confused-about-its-basic-economy-tickets-12
Salzman, M. (2019, October 13). Don’t Be Too Chicken To Newsjack. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariansalzman/2019/10/13/dont-be-too-chicken-to-newsjack/#3eff5d682b5c
Steve Almasy and Sheena Jones, CNN. (2018, March 14). United Airlines calls dog’s death in overhead bin a ‘tragic accident’. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/us/united-airlines-dog-dies-trnd/index.html
‘United Breaks Guitars’: Did It Really Cost The Airline $180 Million? (2017, December 6). Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/united-breaks-guitars-did_n_244357
United Crew Tells Mom Baby Crying ‘Absolutely Unacceptable’. (2018, September 27). Retrieved from https://thepointsguy.com/news/united-crew-tells-crying-baby-unacceptable/