It’s rare these days that a company impresses with customer service. It’s even rarer when that company is an airline, especially an American airline. That’s the experience I had last week when I was flying home from New Orleans on United Airlines.
It started out pretty awful. A few hours before my flight I received a text message that my flight was delayed. Then another. By the time I arrived at the airport, my originating flight had been delayed more than two hours, ensuring that I’d miss my connecting flight in Denver. As it got close to the new departure time, we were told that there was a mechanical issue. After a string of “we’re waiting for an update” announcements, we finally boarded three hours later when a new plane arrived.
Based on experience, I was braced for the worst when I arrived in Denver: a 90 minute wait for a harried customer service rep who would look for every excuse to not put me up for the night. Before leaving New Orleans, I’d tweeted “United already knows who will misconnect. What are the odds they’ll be proactive and have hotel vouchers waiting?” I would’ve placed them at 1000:1, best case.
But that’s exactly what happened. After we landed the gate agent came on board and announced that they had prepared packets with hotel and meal vouchers for everyone who was stranded. Three people were staffing the desk, despite the fact that we arrived around 2 a.m. They were polite and directed us to the hotel shuttles.
Within 20 minutes of landing in San Francisco the next day, there was an apology in my email box for the inconvenience. A link in the email invited me to select from a list of appreciation items, including a $250 travel certificate.
The immediacy and the proactive nature of the response made a very positive impression. It’s great to see companies using IT in this way.
What an inspiring story of when companies actually take their customers seriously and treat them how they would like to be treated.
Comment by john — May 5, 2009 @ 10:55 am
Wish I could say the same! We had an awful experience with United. Started out with me trying to use 15k miles for an upgrade the night before – something went wrong in the system and I called for assistance. Ended up with a “customer service rep”, if you can call him that, who REFUSED to let us speak to his supervisor and eventually hung up on us. So I had to add time in the morning to go to a real person at the check in desk to print my boarding pass. Then in Chicago, we were delayed over 4 hours due to mechanical problems. We had four pilots in the back with us explaining that the reason it was all taking so long was because of miscommunication between the jetway people, the mechanics and the pilot. Had they brought an electrical unit on a cart to begin with, the delay would have been only an hour. We got absolutely nothing for the problems. The poor people in coach were suffocating for lack of air and finally a bunch came up front (we were in business) and demanded to be let off the airplane. It was getting ugly. Flight 245 on May 4 from Chicago to Denver. Sure United gave us a new connection to our final destination, but 5 hours after we landed. The folks onboard the plane were great and were embarrassed for the problems. The customer service people in India are absolutely worthless – I have never had a positive experience with them. How does United expect us to do business with them when they offer such poor customer service?
Comment by Nancy — May 5, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
Interesting post. You have obviously done the research on this. It can be hard to find decent information about this in my experience. i will bookmark this site and check it out again in the future. thanks
Comment by graphics boy — May 24, 2009 @ 12:39 am
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Pingback by Broken Guitar becomes a Broken Record, Did this Youtube video cost $180M | Byron New Media — August 18, 2009 @ 8:08 pm
I did a google for United Airlines customer appreciation and ran across your blog. I’m glad you had a good experience, but the way I see it, United screwed up in the first place so I wouldn’t award them for trying to fix a problem they shouldn’t have had in the first place.
My experience was similar. I was on a flight from SFO to HNL for a gig that would start immediately when I landed. We had THREE attempts to take off until we finally left. I think one or both of the failed attempts were due to mechanical problems, which prompted us to return back to the gate and wait for mechanics. The whole delay ended up being 5 hours. The flight itself was supposed to be 5 hours.
All we got was an intercom message from someone (maybe it was the pilot or just some other employee) saying they apologize for the delay and that we’d get compensated for the inconvenience. Then he tells us the Customer Appreciation website (you’d think if United had to put a dedicated page JUST for these problems that they must have A LOT of delays and problems all the time, correct?).
So I got to the website and get the $250 e-certificate. No option of simply getting a check for those of us who NEVER want to fly on United again…
So now a month later, I decided to try and check on some flights to Hawaii again and see what I can get. I see flights for a little under $400 on United’s own website. Then I do the search again for the exact flights with the e-cert and guess what? It’s NOT $250 less. I see flights that are maybe $50 cheaper. This is the price they say after the supposed discount is applied. Is that BS or what?
Come on United! I can understand flights can get delayed… it happens, any company can screw up. But how can you screw your customers again a second time with the attempt to fix the first screw-up?
Comment by Ken — August 23, 2009 @ 11:53 pm
Nice for you that they arranged compensation, but I don’t think that United Air (and also US Airways) really care about their costumers. If they did they wouldn’t structurally overbook passengers, and use crap equipment. I used to fly ‘cheap’to my family in Philly with United or US and have experienced huge delays and problems. Nowadays i just pay the $200 extra and fly with British Airways or Northwestern.
Comment by J van Laar — September 22, 2009 @ 1:30 pm
You see folks, United itself has the route structure that captures repeat business even on a small scale. Perspectively, your inconvenience due to mechanicals is basically called flight safety. God forbid if the situation happened when in flight. Concerning vouchers due to delays, judgement calls by station agents using protocol as a required guide are not always fair especially to those passengers inconvenienced. So there you go, We all have the right to be safe and happy but unfortunately at a cost. If the cost is inconvenience, that is cheap. Pay the price, its worth it.
Comment by UAL employed — February 9, 2010 @ 10:59 am