Akulashark

What would you like to see changed in the systems at United? I know the website isn't layed out very well and the system the front-line people deal with is aweful, what else?

BTW, I have a meeting with a senior person to discuss this issue so your feedback will be heard.

channa

I would address the time it takes for agents (not just airport, but phone agents) to do things. Part of it is technology, part of it is business process.

bob_the_d

honestly? i'd say just get it working like it's supposed to first before we even talk about changes. there are countless examples on here about seat assignments not sticking, the CPU/TOD system not working, reservations not getting ticketed within UA and *A partners, login issues, missing mileage postings, so on and so forth. get the basics working first.

HitAndRun

Stop the out of sync issue that occurs when the upgrade on the second segment of a mutlisegment itinerary clears some time after the first segment has cleared. Now you end up with two tickets (1 First and 1 coach) and you need to call the 1K line to get agent to cancel out the coach ticket. I have had to call 1K line twice on my current intinerary to solve this problem.

Start sending out easyupdates again i.e. when flight is delayed / cancelled or when upgrade clears. I have not received an easy update since the switchover.

Make the reservation system easier for gate agents. I was at gate in SFO waiting for flight to BOS on Sunday and the previous flight was delayed at the gate due to mechanical. Passengers were boarded and there were 2 seats left in Business First and the agent was trying to assign them. He was struggling and was joined by another gate agent and supervisor all huddled over the terminal furiously typing and talking to United tech support on the phone. Eventually, the captain ran up the jetway and told the agent "We've got to go go go NOW" and with that the flight left.

Make the 1MM companion site work so I can nominate my wife as a 1K. They advertise this benefit but don't provide a systematic way to redeem it.

Fix the mobile and web flight status indicators for multi segment flights with same flight number. Currently, the second segment status is shown "Flight does not operate on <date>"

A lot of other issues around how the Continental verion of United treats 1K and GS customers but IT can't fix that.

Jackstay

Processing of IRROPS

UA-NYC

Whatever processes PMUA used with Apollo/Fastair that made them so much faster than SHARES (mileage posting, UG instrument re-crediting, general lack of excessive typing needed, etc.), mimic them as closely as possible

tods27

This is a bit of a detail item, but when searching for flights on united.com, it states the lowest fare in a row just above all the options. I have seen multiple instances where it says somthing like "Non-stop from $400", only to find that if I select the non-stop on the outbound (it says $400), the non-stop on the return shows $500 (or something similar). If they are going to show you the lowest fare by non-stop, with connections, etc, make sure it is accurate.

emanon256

Instant Ticketing. I hate buying a ticket and having to wait for some batch process to run.

Also, allow me to download a calendar entry for each segment, I don't need a whole week blocked on my calendar, just the flights themselves.

goodeats21

Transparency and simplicity.

I shouldn't need advanced knowledge of booking software / fare codes / sweeps / voodoo or other magic arts in order to book a flight and know my upgrade will be processed correctly, the ticket is "in sync", and I will actually board the plane and sit in my chosen seat.

Irrops handling would also be top of the list.

ric_wx

In a nutshell, I would try and define the cost of doing nothing and the potential economic benefits of additional investment as a subset of the required investment in order to facilitate meaningful change. Someone has to do a better job of building the business case for "why do anything differently"? It's easy to blindly cut costs but much more difficult to engineer process efficiencies that require strategic investment.

I would try and arm the "decision maker" with as many facts as possible about the potential savings that could be gained through future investment. Ask yourself questions such as...

--What technology investments can increase the ability or effectiveness of customers to self serve, either through airport kiosks, mobile or online applications?
--What are the drivers for a customer to call United? What investments will deflect voice inquires from the call center and into self service applications?
--What technology investments can make any front line customer contact resources through all interaction channels more efficient by an order of magnitude, as measured by reductions in transactional handle time?

Labor is the biggest cost to the airline that is directly within their control (at least in terms of how much it they consume). I would argue that the recent changes have produced labor efficiencies so unfavorable at scale that they have quickly usurped any of the technology savings recognized by retiring Apollo. This is before you attempt to assign dollar value $1 to measurements of customer experience, loyalty or our most volatile topic of late...sources of incremental revenues.

Today UA's answer to all of this is painfully simple - we'll deflect calls and emails by not answering them. We'll discourage human interactions at the airport by making them so difficult and time consuming that no one would attempt them in light of any available alternative. And they are betting (apparently) that we'll accept these changes as the new normal over time as there are few alternative competitors that can perform any better. This is a shortsighted strategy at best.

I believe this airline has an appetite for investment assuming one can demonstrate a measurable and sustainable long term ROI.

Akulashark

This was an interesting and fairly productive meeting. I now have an open dialogue with this person and will be included in further communications.

His perspective.
They did a great job in planning enough training for the Gate and Reservation staff. Once the systems started changing they noticed behavior at Reservations is different than that at the gate and the way people conduct themselves in the systems at the airport seems to be much faster.

The systems are too disconnected. The way things are done and systems used for a customer, gate agent and reservations agent, are too segmented. The whole platform needs to be integrated and workflows for each need to reflect need. A customer needs access to the same data a Res Agent does, they just need it in a different way and presented in a consumable fashion.

They are aware of the problems and are addressing them, they do not have a clear plan to communicate this and they are working on communication to ground staff, customers and the public.

My concerns
The ground staff are getting killed with a system that is too complex to use. Customers are unable to effectively use the website for things like Mileage Plus data, upgrades, finding reservations, etc...
Training seems to be lax in that I recently was put on another carrier and they deleted my reservation as a step in the process causing me to lose my ticket.
I cannot call into the call centers anymore, they are just too busy.

All in all it seems they are now on the platform they can build from. They moved way too much way too fast and in doing so have alienated some of their loyal customers. They are going to change the way they do system upgrades in the future to try to make it a little more seamless.

We didn't discuss time-frames or even specifics, it was a very general conversation about the status of things and what they are going to be moving toward.

Jetlagged

This is too late for your first dialog, but perhaps for future discussions.

1. I would really start by looking at the strategy. Shares is a decades long product, is it capable of handling future needs? How will they get future employees ( the current generation) to even want to deal with a Command Line interface? Net, is Shares an interim platform or their future? (if the latter, I would recommend early retirement to avoid work trauma)

2. Did they accurately translate marketing requirements (did they have any??) into IT Specs

3. Their strategy for connecting disparate systems depends on whether Shares is an interim play- or the future.

4. What is their plan for getting the right IT talent in place- this was as botched as is feasible.

Bear4Asian

+1 Amen!

channa

This is quite basic, and it's a shame that this had to be a post-cutover learning point.

Either they failed to do adequate requirements gathering, or they assumed that there was no difference in how UA and CO used the system, and the legacy CO staff indeed use the system differently than legacy UA staff at the airport, yet they relied on their previous SHARES data points, which would be all CO data.

This is essentially my theory which is that legacy CO uses various tactics to avoid dealing with the cumbersome system when possilbe, whereas legacy UA provided more service because the system helped facilitate the transaction easily).

Thunderroad

Thanks very much for sharing this information, but I can't help thinking that to a good extent your systems (whatever that means, exactly) colleague is shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. If I understand correctly the many useful posts in this forum on SHARES, it is an antiquated system that can only be patched up to a limited extent. UA will be able to smooth over some problems, but many are inherent in the system.

I also found his perspective you indicated in the bolded comments ironic if not laughable. They did a great job of planning the training, but the planning did not take actual training needs and system problems into account.

In any event, thanks again for this info and for the efforts you're making...whatever exactly they are.