United Airlines brand may go for a spin as customer feedback line is terminated

Posted on February 11, 2009, 10:41 am, by Shashank Nigam Comments Comments
United Airlines Boeing 737-522 landing, San Jose.
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In a startling revelation today, United Airlines announced that it’s closed down it’s sole customer service call center in India. This means that customers will no longer be able to call in to send feedback (positive or negative), as all comments have now got to go through the post (whoever writes those today!?) or in an email.

“Along with the decision to end its association with a third-party contractor in India, United will shut down its current customer relations telephone line and advise customers to write or e-mail feedback about their travel experience.” – BusinessWeek

The only positive I see coming out of this is some consulting offers for Oliver Beale, of the Virgin Atlantic fame, to help write some letters that have an impact. Cutting 165 jobs in India might save some money for United, but the long term damage of not giving customers a way to interact Live with a person from the airline will be extremely detrimental to the brand.

Moving back in time!

As the world moves forward, United Airlines seems to be moving back in time. They now expect us to write in a letter to them, put a stamp on it and post it when we have a complaint about their service. I can’t help but feel pity for a passenger who actually does that, to get a response like “Thanks for your letter. We’ll get back to you” in four weeks, if he hears back at all. Or get a “Mailbox is full” reply when an email is sent. I’m not saying that is the case. But given how long United Airlines’ call center takes to get me to speak to a rep, that might very well be the case with my letters! And just by the way, isn’t this feedback for the airline’s benefit, so others can avoid the displeasure? Customers these days want to TALK to someone, and not engage in slow-moving (often one-way conversations).

Airlines need to speak more with the customers, not less

It is an understood fact that customers preferences change very fast in a downturn. So in these times, shouldn’t an airline be getting its feelers out and taking note of changing sentiments as soon as possible? And a letter is certainly not a fast way to do that. Moreover, a customer is much more likely to pick up the phone than write a 1000 word email about his experience. As United “speaks” less to the customer, not only is it going to lose important market research about them, but also lose the chance to showcase its personality to the customer.

Recently, when Rohit Bhargava, the author of the very popular Influential Marketing Blog was asked “what is one brand desperately in need of personality?”, his answer (unsurprisingly) was United Airlines. And I’ve written in the past of the importance of having a personality, specifically for United Airlines. Simply put, it’s much easier to hate a faceless corporate, than a company where you can speak to its people and relate to them. United Airlines has just lost that chance too.

All marketers are liars – Seth Godin

United Airlines proves Seth Godin right, literally. “This streamlined approach enables us to carefully research our guests’ feedback and most importantly, respond thoughtfully with an e-mail, letter or phone call,” the company said in an internal release. Who’s going to believe that? United is no Virgin Atlantic, to hire people who criticize its food!

The other lie is that the jobs are being moved back to the US. Interestingly, that’d only be true if United was cutting 165 people in India and adding 165 in the US. But that’s not the case. It’s the existing reservations staff that will now have the extra task of replying to these letters and emails!

Well tried, United. Try harder next time. I don’t think it’s so easy to fool the educated consumer these days. All things said, even if United saves $100,000 per year by chopping down this call center, the amount of brand equity lost due to lack of customer contact is immesurable. And as the MasterCard advertisement goes, “there’re some things in life money can’t buy”. Brand value is one of them.

What do you think? Do you think it’s the right decision by United Airlines to shut down the only phone line they had for customers to call in to? I’m sure we’ll have a lively discussion here. Feel free to share this article with your friends, andsubscribe to the blog by email or RSS as well.

P.S: Due to this news, I couldn’t help but digress from the Indian Aviation Special edition, running all Feb on SimpliFlying. In-depth analysis of the Indian airline industry resumes on Friday. Promise!

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  • United Airlines is by far the worst airline in terms of customer service in the world. What is worse, their employees are often defensive and seem to hate the general public. They are in a terrible downward spiral which puts their customer service rating one notch lower than the DMV and one notch above the British in India. In other words, horrific.

    I have found a great way to piss off United employees. Tell them to their face how good Southwest is. It seems to make their blood curdle. I did this several times while waiting for an hour in a customer service line while ONE service rep helped people one problem at a time.

    Give up on United. It is only when people refuse to fly them that they will change, or go under. Make a conscious effort NOT to fly them. Support good companies with reliable customer service and care for their clients.
  • Susan Wheeler
    India is NOT United's only call center. They have call centers in Detroit, Honolulu & Chicago. The India call centers were an extreme problem with most United customers. To have someone that is already upset call India for customer service was absolutely absurd anyway... as the initial problem magnified due to the limited communication with India agents who read basic scripts and couldn't solve a real problem anyway. It was doomed to fail.
  • @Susan: You're right that India wasn't United's only call center. But it was the only one people could call in to give feedback. The rest are all booking centers, for reservations only.
  • James McAllister
    United totally sucks. They are unprofessional and rude and their entire culture is anti-customer, from their ticket agents to their flight attendants.

    None of their feedback and resolution methods worked for me when they destroyed my suitcase, weather delayed my United flight, and I missed my United connection to Japan and had to stay overnight in Chicago at my own expense ("the weather is not out fault," the agent said but they knew the weather was bad when they boarded me and kept my flight on the ground for two hours waiting for takeoff clearance that resulted in my missing my next flight by 10 minutes). Regarding my destroyed suitcase, they pointed to TSA and TSA pointed back to United.

    Eventually I got a flight from O'Hare to Narita but the 13 hour flight was sheer agony, stuffed into the cramped seat with no leg or arm room. The only good thing I can say about it is that the plane didn't crash.

    I've been fighting with them for almost a month now, trying to retrieve my login and password for their Mileage Plus frequent flier website so I can enter my mileage. Been going back and forth with email, requests for personal identifiers (date of birth, middle initial, name of my last school attended, etc., etc.). Their information systems are Byzantine and nobody cares. I get a different person every time I contact them.

    I'm about to give up on United. Will just never fly with them again, whatever the alternative costs.
  • Gilles Rivet
    Memories of a great brand... I enjoyed to "fly the friendly skies"
  • Walter White
    United has lost touch with it's very frequent flyers, employees, and investors. They need to completely change their business model. They have too many stale old management ideas circulating in their boardrooms in Chicago. Lufthansa can pay people top dollar with top benefits, have some of the best aircraft, seats, service, facilities, and innovation in the industry - and they make over a Billion $$ in profits! UA & AA continue to not invest in the future, place blame on employees, take away compensation & benefits, reduce Frequent Flyer award benefits and award availability, fly inferior aircraft interiors, and continually lose money. I have news for them - everything they are doing isn't working! The stockholders should fire the entire upper level management structure including all VPs and start over.
  • Ronald Kuhlmann
    United, along with all but two of the other US legacy carriers wrote down the value of goodwill to zero--implying that the brand name no longer has intrinsic value. So they probably don't care.
  • John Kosak
    I've had a few bad experiences on United over the last few trips I took. I called the first time and it took them a long time to "see" the error of their ways. Since it took that much effort last time, I didn't even bother the next time. Why tease us with a feedback line when they obviously aren't listening to the feedback? They are most likely tired of answering the question about why they still have a charge in place for checked baggage even though the fuel prices that drove the policy to be implemented is long gone.

    That's just my humble opinion.
  • Veronica Cooper
    Interesting indeed. I think we assume we know how customers want to interact and/or interact best. Not always true. I assume in this case UA's research found the quality of feedback received in letter form or email was more detailed and/or received better then communicated to a 3rd party call center and then back to UA. I've used UA call center when changing flights and I can say from experience that depending on who you get on the line you will have a totally different result/experience. The same would have to be true for the complaint line. This can be worse for business. Cost cutting is a fine balance, but I'm sure UA considered the matter with consideration of customer experience in mind.
  • Fiona Murton
    Hi Shashank
    Whatever happened to the customer coming first?
    A sign of the times I'm afraid with cost cutting. I presume they expect people to post online.
  • Jose Gomez
    I personally am not happy with United Airlines for their lack of follow-up on a complaint I made a few months re: a credit I was issued and misplaced and they said they could not offer another credit to replace it. I have told others as well about my unhappiness and exp regardless of how it is policy or not. They only care about their bottom line not their customers. I told United I would re-evaluate with whom I would travel with in the future because of this poor service and lack of recovery they were unwilling to do on their behalf.
  • Mark Gardner
    Not a smart move.... Customer feedback is like an aircraft without a navigation reference point. How do you know where you are? How can you decide what heading is necessary to steer the company? Dumb! ------ Moderator - Professional Pilot Employment Search group.
  • Mark Carolla
    Shashank --- Good ideas. I agree with you regarding the deplorable customer service at United. This idea of passengers being a bother and not having live people to deal with is absurd. However, I believe that the UAL India and Phillipine call centers are unhelpful and of little use. They are part of the problem. I am not being xenophobic here --- if I were to be planning a trip to India I would be delighted to hear a Hindi or other South Asian accent at the other end of the phone. My problem has been that the personnel in these call centers do not know enough North American geography; don't know the airports; and generally cannot be helpful to passengers here in the USA. And, quite frankly, I've had severe linguistic issues in dealing with them. This was not a problem when we had IADRR and other call centers across the USA - and appropriate call centers overseas.

    The issue here is not the closing of the call center in India --- This trend is not limited to United - part of the problem is that many airline managers have no aviation experience or passion for the industry. Prior to the Wolf years, United truly was the Friendly Skies. I was a travel agent in the mid 1970's and United was a fine airline. It was a fine airline in 1990 when my wife joined the company, but during the ensuing years I watched it go into a tail spin, as much from greedy financial schemes, management by clueless MBAs rather than by flyers and customer service-oriented people who rose from the ranks, and by refusing to treat the staff as professionals.

    United also made a decision to treat the frmost frequent fliers - I call them "pampered rich poodles" well and to treat the middle class and infrequent fliers as second-class. They bragged about it in the employee newsletter by touting how they were going to charge more for Red Carpet Club Membership for normal patrons, while lowering the price for Premier Members - seems the Premiers were complaining about their lounges being crowded with the lesser classes.

    I could go on and on...I wrote a letter to Aviation Week a year ago saying "Bravo for Common Sense" for the thought that airlines need to charge a fare that makes a profit - not one that gives them their best market share while flying an overstuffed cattle car in the sky.

    Perhaps the travel agency business will arise from the ruins of this mess and earn money by championing the rights and customer service for passengers on the likes of United - a proud carrier that could soon be yet another fallen flag.

    Of course, I'm always ready to add my consulting expertise on this subject as I've done aviation business model work for the taxpayers and was a travel agent back in the day. - Mark Carolla
  • Mary Stephan
    No, I don't think it was the right decision. However as a travel professional I and many of my colleagues have been ombudsmen for our clients with the airlines when there have been issues. We will continue to do so.
  • Steven Eberly
    You must be under the impression that airlines listen to their feedback! I've had the opportunity to speak with several high-ranking airline executives recently, and the story goes like this:

    "The economy is down and we have to cut costs wherever we can. Cutting flights means fewer available seats, and higher load factors, neither of which is particularly helpful to passengers. Services are cut, rates go up, and employees are worked to the bone, turning them into "not so nice" people. Customers don't like what airlines feel they HAVE to do to survive...and they complain. It's not that we don't care. It just that the current operating model doesn't have financial room to care."

    Will it impact the profit margin at UAL? They have no profits to impact.
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