CO_Nonrev_elite

United has come last in every metric including and especially customer service for a long time now. Even their own internal metrics have now hit the bottom of the barrel. Almost all current training is now is about trying to stop the employees being the problem.

They now have wifi and or entertainment more or less fleet wide, they have improved the food, they have improved the lounges etc, and now are left with the bitter nasty employee groups.

Of course it isn't all employees, but likewise, this board's flyers are a very limited scope on the problem.

Rather than focus on all the negativity (every survey, all social media outlets), there is not a single area of the media, statistics or surveys that are saying United are doing well.

BearX220

I know that... look at my signature line. And I think those surveys are mostly credible and believable.

Just as there are people on here who turn handstands to invalidate objective surveys because "I've flown United ten times this year, and had no cancellations!" or "I'm GS and I don't see what you see, therefore what you see must not exist!" ... there are also people who will condemn the whole shooting match on the equally invalid basis of a single solitary anecdote. One extreme is as wrong as the other. Anecdotes don't trump metadata.

halls120

While there are no doubt problem employees that need to have their attitudes changed, it isn't just "bitter nasty employee groups" that are the problem. It's just as much the fault of management as it is the fault of employees.

Yes, they have Wifi almost fleet wide. Which doesn't work as reliably as the Wifi on the competition. Over the past two years, I've never had WiFi fail on an AA segment. On UA, Wifi operation is not dependable, just like their overall operation. And then there is the minor but nonetheless annoyance of having to type in your credit card billing info every time you want to purchase UA Wifi. How are either the fault of "bitter nasty employee groups?"

Yes, they have improved the food. But the service is inconsistent, and I believe it's going to continue to be inconsistent as long as the flight attendants aren't unified in a single work group. How is that the sole fault of "bitter nasty employee groups?"

I know some people are tired of hearing this, but the tools the front line CSRs and GAs have to work with are not industry leading by any means. I was passing through SYD a few days ago, and had to get a BP for my SFO flight from a GA because my initial leg was on a OW carrier. The only gate open at the time was for the LAX flight, so I stopped there to get the BP. The single GA was very nice, considering she was managing a flight that was going through a MX delay. She agreed to get me my BPs, and then struggled to get them printed. After a furious number of keystrokes, she apologized for the delay, and I said "don't worry, take your time, I know what you're dealing with." She looked up and said "thank you, not everyone understands." Another employee had walked up and also smiled when he heard what I said. If, three years into the unified PSS, employees are still struggling with a cumbersome and inefficient IT infrastructure, how is that the sole fault of "bitter nasty employee groups?"

As long as management fails to understand and admit that they are part of the problem, UA is going to continue to rank near the bottom in surveys such as this one.

CO_Nonrev_elite

Last time I checked, people in management are employees also

pdx1M

Very few folks go to work every day of their lives wanting to be nasty or negative. When you get a broad set of employees acting that way the blame can only go up the tree to management and management practices. When one is in the customer service business as an employee the gratification (beyond the simple paycheck) is in the personal feedback from helpful human contact. If you take that away you do get frustrated employees. UA seems to have given their front line folks tools that simply don't get the job done in helping customers and policies that prohibit them from doing "what makes sense" to help (and is most often a win-win for UA and the customer). This generates employee frustration directly and since more customers don't get sanely helped it undoubtedly generates more negative customer-employee interactions which further frustrates the employees. It takes a really strong self confidence/ego to stay positive as an employee in these circumstances. You can't "train" good customer service unless management is first willing to create the environment in which is can take place. Thus far the UA management hasn't seemed to realize this or at least hasn't seemed to act on a realization of it.

physioprof

This makes a lot of sense. For example, one of the FAs on a recent flight told me she likes the upgraded domestic first food service, as she prefers serving nice meals as separate courses over the "one-tray" service. In my experience, the vast majority of people really want to be effective at their jobs, unless and until that desire is drained out of them by externalities that prevent them from doing so (such as lack of appropriate tools).

CO_Nonrev_elite

Oddly enough, in most of the employee commentary I read, they spend most of their time complaining about customers all wanting something for nothing a lot more than they complain about management. They want to abolish upgrades completely, and have the only folks in first class be the ones that paid for it directly. They also want to abolish people being able to use miles for premium cabins etc.

In their words, the reason UA is trailing their competitors in the financial department is because they are giving away everything for free.

Be careful what you wish for...

halls120

Well, when you refer to "bitter nasty employee groups" I think most people thought you were referring to front line employees who have interaction with passengers on a frequent basis.

I don't think Jeff Smisek, John Rainey, and their senior minions even know what it takes to interact with a customer.

I thought FA's didn't know who was a paying customer and who was an upgraded customer?

BearX220

Emotional, adversarial workplace politics being one such externality. UA is one of several airlines that have endured episodes of employee-as-saboteur behavior, wherein large blocs of workers acted against the interests of the company and its customers to score political points. UA has had waves of this stuff since the Allegis days in the '80s, and similar factors killed Eastern outright. It's not always management that's to blame -- though at this point in UA's sad history I think it's 90% Team Smisek.

If the typical employee ever had to manage the typical airline it would be destroyed on day one. And remember that when the largest customer-facing bloc of UA employees was offered a stake in owning / operating the airline -- in the ESOP -- they (the FAs) ran in the other direction.

goalie

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channa

And where exactly do you think they're getting this from?

Management has been beating this drum for the past 4+ years.

We don't hear Rainey talking about how our Elite customers are valuable customers who spend a lot of money with us and thus have earned their perks. We hear his "over-entitled" remarks and the like. If that sort of stuff has made it out publicly, I wonder how much else they're saying that we're not aware of.

Bottom line, management sets the tone for the organization. If management wanted staff to believe that Elite perks are earned and well deserved, they would communicate such. Problem is, they don't believe it. And that trickles down into employees not going the extra mile to go above and beyond for Elite members.

porciuscato

There's one thing we can agree on: they spend an awful lot of time complaining about customers. I can hardly count the times I've had an FA complain to me about other customers. Utterly unprofessional IMO.

Right. So there will be more space for their own friends and family on buddy passes. On my last PVG-ORD flight, 9/11 in Global First were non-rev.

In my words, UA is trailing competitors because they are stuck with a lot of 'C' and 'D' quality people for cabin crews. That comes with a system that rewards people for age instead of performance. Take a look at the qualifications for Lufthansa flight attendants. I'd bet that they would reject about 80% of United's current FAs.


Disagree. It's not necessarily management. Union rules that reward seniority over quality play a big role. There's a very consistent pattern: wherever unions succeed in enforcing their idiotic seniority systems, customer service stinks - whether it's the DMV, education, or the Post Office. These systems breed over-entitled employees with bad attitudes.

FlyWorld

What is the source for above?

Are you saying that a majority of United Continental employees overall have stated they want to abolish upgrades and use of miles for premium cabins?

CO_Nonrev_elite

Of course not, but I have read a lot of commentary of them saying so. Unless they had a poll of all employees, no one is going to be able to say a majority. I am able to say that a majority of the ones commenting on forums or bulletins talk about this and other customer issues a lot more than they comment on management issues.

spin88

I agree with your point 100%, but I don't think it applies to the OP. The OP ran into a policy established by management, and a management employee who was (in a way as management he felt entirely appropriate) enforcing that policy. I view the actions of a management employee very differently. What the OP got was - unfortunately - a reflection not of a bad day, but of a culture.

Let me give you an example. I had a flight back from DCA the other day on DL. I was in paid A/P class. There is WX, and my original flight will miss my connection back to SFO, DL sends me an e-mail rebook, it is in FC. I check in at the airport, they give me a gate pass saying "first class" but send me for a seat at the gate. I get there, agent is stressed, I give her the gate pass, she tells me they only have coach seats, starts to get pissy, its chear to me that they did not expect me. So what happens? The other agent sees her co-worker is going sideways, steps in. Tells me "please please wait a few minutes, we are right at 30 min, and I think we have a no show, I'll give you that seat, otherwise I'll go on the plane and get you a seat, someone made a mistake" The key thing is that DL culture is to fix things, and the other agent felt empowered to step in, fix the issue. No one is empowered at Jeff's United, the opposite is true.

I seriously hope that United does not feel it has fixed its product problems. United at best put a bandaid on a gaping wound. Wifi is spotty (I know, I buy it on VX and DL where it works), I was just in the DL lounge at JFK, worlds better than any UC. Not even in the same league. Sorry, the streaming is at best spotty (I've personally never gotten it to work) and large parts of the fleet (A320/319) have NO POWER, and as far as I can see no effort to add it. The only time I tried to use the power on a 744, it was spotty, the outlets are very weird, pop out plugs. Food sorry, it still lags badly. And lets not talk about the horrible, sucky, no good coffee, no espresso, and really embarrassing wine and booze selection.

And how sucky the United Slim lines (on the airbus and Crj700) are is beyond debate, whoever authorized buying them should be defenestrated out of the Sears tower.

United fell way behind OALs in its product, and no one I actually talk to on flights (always in FC) who has flown OALs disagrees that United still is bottom of the barrel.

The problem is not the employees, its seriously sub-part product, a bad OT performance, bad IRROPS, a bad CRS system, and corporate policies which inhibit employees from helping passengers. Untied does not have an employee problem, it has a C suite problem.

The complaints I have heard since Jeff took over are about TODs, "people paying $20 to sit up front and demanding they make it worth that $20 they shelled out" as one FA told me. I have heard lots of funny stories of "discount passengers who took the buy up, and expect us to serve them like its the concord" as I can recall another FA saying.

Frankly, I don't think many FAs totally understand the differences (pmCO had little actual full fare FC sales, it was all Y-up type fares) they just want a classier set of passengers than they have now. Alas, people with options, and who actually expect a premium experience, already left.