I begin with an apology to the fine men and women who work at United Airlines, some of who are personal friends and many who have provided me with exceptional service over the years. They provide a counterbalance to the three examples of service goofiness that I share below.
Three cases in point: on a recent trip from Chicago O'Hare I witnessed customer disservice not once or twice, but three times.
Episode One: UA has a first class/premium customer security line in O'Hare, ostensibly as a perk to valued flyers. It is staffed by contractors who are usually unpleasant and, in my experience, always unreasonable. The same garment bags that flew in successfully stowed in overhead bins are forbidden to fly back out. The boarding pass checker told me my bag was oversized. I informed her it wasn't. She told me it would have to be checked. The man in front of me complained that this woman had made him check his normally sized garment bag as well. He was steaming.
I left the baggage nazi and went to the normal security line a short distance away where my bag went through without incident.
Annoying customers and wasting their time is bad. The only thing worse is annoying your best customers. O'Hare is the only place in the world -- literally -- that I have encountered this strange phenomenon of the oversized garment bag.
Simple lesson: if you’re going to use independent contractors, make sure they don’t consistently piss off your customers, especially your most valued ones.
Episode Two: I go to the Red Carpet Club. As I am showing my membership card, a German gentleman next to me is really upset. He, too, is a club member. He is traveling with his wife and another couple. The rules are only two guests. He wants to bring in a third guest. The woman behind the counter must be related to the garment bag lady and she tells him no. He is getting increasingly aggravated so I try to help. "Let one of his guests come in on my card. I'm entering alone." The man rejoices and goes to inform his companions. I start to walk away. The woman behind the counter yells out, "Sir, we don't do that. You don't know any of those people." She is berating me so I go back to the counter, "Look. I was only trying to help out."
The man and his guests are told they can't enter on his card and my card. He goes nuts and utters an expletive. At this point the woman scolds him for his language which is truly understandable given the woman’s denseness.
I go upstairs. I'm unsettled by this unwillingness to make a reasonable exception to make the customer happy so I ask to speak with the service director.
Guess what? The unreasonable woman downstairs is the service director. The French have a phrase to describe her behavior: coma depasse. It means “beyond brain dead.”
Simple Lesson: Why wouldn’t any thinking person make an exception to a rule when it would bring a little happiness to a customer? The Red Carpet room wasn’t busy or crowded. This woman was simply pulling rank and hiding behind the rules.
Episode Three: My plane is scheduled to depart at 4:45. My "oversized" luggage has been easily placed overhead. At 5:00 the plane isn't moving. Many passengers are kind of wondering what’s going on when the pilot informs us "Five more minutes to close a cargo door." Fifteen minutes later we push...and wait. At 5:30 we're told ten minutes until takeoff. At 5:45 we're told we'll be using another runway and it will take an additional 7 minutes. At 6:00 we're told we're number two for takeoff which occurs at 6:05. Literally everything the pilot has told us has been wrong.
After taking off we're informed we'll be landing at 7:05. Scheduled time was 5:56 and the pilot, no math wiz, says that will make us "about 30 minutes late to the gate."
I know the primary responsibility of the pilot is to safely fly the plane but is it too much to ask for a little common sense and some customer service skills? The first rule is: if you don't know, don't say it. The second rule is: don't downplay delays. Passengers have lives, people to meet, things to do, and it is all predicated on arriving approximately when originally planned.
Simple Lesson: Unless due to an uncontrollable delay (weather or equipment, and research shows both are inaccurately used excuses), there is no reason to be so late and so nonchalant about it. Customers don’t like delays, but the only thing worse is being given bad information about the delay.
These are difficult times for air travelers. Come on UAL--don't make it worse with such customer disservice.
