I'm not sure I agree with this. I don't fault the FA's for UA's problems.

A concerned FA asked me last year what they can do, as FA's, to fix the problems at UA.

I reassured him that there was absolutely nothing he could to to fix United. The best he could do would be to take the edge off. Because by the time we've stepped aboard his plane, we've already been beaten up by United. We've had our ticketing issues, our reservations issues, our upgrade issues, our computer issues, our delays, our crappy club experience, etc. He can't fix any of that. The best he can do is make the next X hours as easy as possibly by providing attentive service with the tools that were provided to him.

I thanked him for providing a PDB despite our delay (and explained how some FA's capitalize on delays to avoid having to offer PDBs), and for his attentive service. But I was clear in my point -- he can't fix United. Best he can do is make United a bit more bearable than it would be without him, and if he focuses on that, he's doing his part.

Did I say it was up to the FA's to fix UA? No, I said they are considered the face of the brand. And for the vast majority of passengers they are. When you have a good flight it's probably because you got good, friendly service from an FA. The agents were probably nice and calm. That's what people remember. They also remember rude, lying, and belligerent employees. At the end of the day 80% of passengers don't care about upgrades, or crappy clubs, they care about how they are treated. That's what sticks in their minds the most. And it's customer service and FA's who primarily interact with people. Why do people enjoy flying DL? Because people are generally nice, so the other stuff that they don't do so well gets minimized.

You can fault UA for trying this approach, and I'm sure you will, but really, at this point what harm could it do? In my experience, anytime you get people to take some ownership in their jobs or life, they make improvements. Hopefully some of the horrible customer service reputation that UA has deservedly gained will start to change.

Bingo.

Friendly, genuine service is what makes or breaks an experience. Look at Southwest or Alaska, neither have particularly great products and Southwest has crappy IT and mediocre operations (right now). Yet, both generally have engaged and caring employees, which is why customers like them.

Not so fast! SW allows those caring employees to take care of customers - empowerment. UA does not do that. They penalize employees who go above and beyond. Big difference.

On international pairings the cabin crew and cockpit crew remain together during the entire trip.

Yes, one trip. Usually two flights (a roundtrip).

They are not together all month.

On domestic flights, it may be just one leg.

I think this approach by UA is misguided. The problem with UA, and it seems unique to UA, is that the customer is more often in a disappointed state by the time they interact with the front-line employee.

The front-line employee is not going to make or break the experience. The front-line employee should be focused on taking the edge off of an already poor customer experience.

If UA could rally around that, I think that would be their best shot. But that requires a level of self-awareness and acknowledgement that I've never seen out of post-merger UA or pre-merger CO.

By the time we interact with that FA, UA has already likely demonstrated its poor technical and operational performance to the customer -- whether it's reservations issues, ticketing issues, rebooking issues, a delay they didn't post when they knew about it, or whatnot. A good or bad FA isn't going to "make or break" the experience. It's just going to make UA more or less sucky. No amount of attentiveness refilling of really bad coffee is going to fix that.

While I do not fly WN, I do fly AS quite a bit, and I disagree that they have a weak product. There are certainly weaknesses in some areas (e.g., no seatback personal TVs), but they have solid technology that is generally reliable, empowered employees who can work in the customer's best interest, they have an Elite program that delivers pretty well, they have some nice touches in on board product (e.g., Starbucks coffee, Kona and Alaska beer, printed menus on transcon/Hawaii, orchids on Hawaii flights, fee mai tai in Y on Hawaii flights, free snack mix in Y), a very low distance threshold for F meals, and waived change fees for MVPG and above.

If UA fixed the above and performed like AS in these areas, their customers, too, would be more likely to be forgiving of UA's weaknesses.

The employee component is secondary. They have to do stuff well in the first place before an employee will be able to "make or break" the experience.

The employee components carry more weight than you make it seem. Ever been to a Disney property? Great products, but what if the majority of employees are rude or indifferent? Wouldn't be such a great place. And if it's a work force that should be demoralized it's Disney employees, but they're trained to understand that their attitude makes or breaks a customers experience. Same at AS, SQ, NH or any service industry. You can have the best of everything but if employees treat you like crap, the. That's what you remember. Things at UA are no where near as bad as you project, especially now. 2004 maybe, but not now. So the only thing preventing good customer service is the employees unwillingness to do so. The excuses about them getting in trouble for helping or going above and beyond are just that, excuses, because UA sends out a steady stream of experiences to its work force about employees who went above and beyond to improve a customers experience, often times "bending the rules" to do so. The employee has the power to make a difference with their attitude. Making them aware of this hopefully will help.

If you think training people to do their job right and take some measure of pride in it is misguided, well, I don't know what to say.

You mention companies like Disney and SQ, who have high quality products to begin with. That's my whole point. United needs to fix itself before they think the employee can make or break the experience.

You add a good employee/service layer on top of an already solid product foundation.

United is nowhere in the same league as these guys you reference as leaders (who are product leaders and service leaders). Alaska gives me a printed menu, decent coffee, reliable upgrades, guarantees my bags on the carousel in 20 minutes, all on top of one of the most reliable air transportation networks in the country. Then they give me good service and a smile on top of that. In that case, the employee interaction can make or break the experience. They're firing on all cylinders, a great employee interaction will reinforce that, a poor one can tarnish that.

United is not in the same league as these other players.

A more appropriate comparison would be a company like Sears or Kmart. They're currently garbage, have poor facilities and often poor quality products. Even if those companies were to focus on service, the experience would still be weak. No amount of service at Kmart is going to make or break the experience. At best, it can take the edge off a frustrating company to do business with.

That's where United is.

+1. Channa nails it.

All companies make missteps and the interaction with front line staff can turn that into an acceptable or poor experience.

I know you don't fly Southwest, but you can't ignore the validity of the example. It's a basic coach product with mediocre reliability and the worst IRROPS recovery of the large carriers. Yet, it's a still a great experience because there are employees that genuinely care.

Better reliability would certainly make United employees' jobs easier. However, you need to remember the network carriers have better operating performance than at most points in recent history. There are a couple that are downing phenomenal, but it's difficult to say United's OTP will impede customer service when other airlines have and continue to deliver good service with worse OTP (and other DOT metrics).

United is not a bad airline and it continues to improve. I strongly believe that motivated, engaged, and genuinely caring employees are critical to making it an even better experience for customers, not a new brand of coffee or printed menus or an orchid blossom in he lav.

Channa nailed it with a good explanation of why AS excels (even without seat back AVOD :)). AS gives its employees the tools to have positive interactions with the passengers. Issues arise before flight, AS employees are empowered to fix them. AA does as well (so people have uniformly reported, I have no personal experience) which - along with better technology (no SHARES) makes IRROPS better. DL's stock answer is "let me see how I can make this work"

Yes, Delays happen, but how they are handled is key. UA both has lots of them and (due to not empowering its employees or giving them the technological tools) handles them very poorly. I was GS, and I could not get people to help me. In 2012 I was told they could not help (they were told they could not do x,y,z) by GS reps, and in 2013 I was told that there was no option, no flight, ext, and was basically left on my own. I self evidently "left on my own" :D and found being a 1K was no better in 2014. I am now neither GS or 1K, I'm Gold on AS, DL (soon to be PLT), and VX, and use my MM status on my few UA flights.

Finally on OP performance you claim in bold that others have "worse" OTP, AA has been similar to UA, not worse, and it again treats its passagners better. SW has worked to improve its networks reliablity, but it also has few LONG delays (most are short) like UA does, and few cancelled flights. There has been no airline that has been "worse" overall than UA for any period of time since Jeff took over.

And as it relates to onboard product, you can keep claiming that there is nothing wrong with what UA has been offering, but (1) the FAs are justifiably horrified by the sad sack crap they are given to work with, and (2) they get berated by passengers who are too, and (3) even UA appears to realize the bottom of everything soft/hard product you have claiming did not hurt them, is hurting them, as they are (late and too little :eek:) trying to fix some of it. If you serve crap coffee day in and day out, passengers say something about it (particularly in FC or BF/IFC), ditto the poor booze. Some guy paid $1000/2000/5000 for his ticket and you give him random $8 wine and dewers white label scotch and freshbrew? I both see the FAs get yelled at by passengers all the time for the poor food/drink, as well as lack of wifi/power/ife, and then the streaming does not work.

If you think people don't notice, well you are just wrong. I was in FC on UA a few weeks ago, and the woman across from me said to the FA "why no IFE, I thought you guys were supposed to be a premium airline" FA explained how great the stremaing was, but the streaming did not work on her computer (or for me either on my ipad with the app or my computer). Then we got no lunch, her comment was "well AS feeds me, what is this." She also did not drink her coffee, told me (she has give up with the FA) it was undrinkable. FAs get this day in and day out.

And now the "savvy" folks who are running UA into the ground (and underperforming now for three streight years, although you would not tell this from Jeff's pay package :rolleyes:) want to take the inflight slack of long TPAC flights and giving you no food for 7-8-9 hours sell you chips and cookies instead. No real food, but we will sell you junk food, on a long flight. How many Y passengers will like this new scheme. Or not having espresso in BF (rather than rolling it out fleet wide, UA is cutting, so predictable).

I have flown for years, and IMHO the same FAs are less happy and less friendly when major cuts to service come down, and do better when improvements in product are rolled out. The product impacts how they get treated by passengers, and when the product is poor (as UAs is) its hard to put on a Disney smile.

The folks who work at greyhound are not chipper, and I see no reason why UA staff should be either. I don't expect service employees to be the lipstick on a pig.

I don't think we're that far off in terms of agreement, I think it's more of a sequencing issue.

You mention WN, and they offer a competitive product: 2 free bags, free snack in Y, and no fee to change reservations (you can dump the whole trip and lose no money, so long as you use the funds in the future).

I think we disagree with whether UA is running a good operation at present (btw, I am literally writing this while waiting for my 2+ hour delayed flight -- another broken CO plane, and I'm also waiting in a club that's not United's because I gave up on the United Club with their cheap booze and bad snacks). This after an inbound where UA served me in First, the same meal they sell in Coach (though granted, on a plate).

If DL came out and said we're investing in CS to give customers that extra 110%, I'd be all on board. They know how to run a good, solid operation that people generally like.

United hasn't figured that part out (yet), so I see these efforts are premature. That runs the risk of backfiring because employees will get hyped up and go the extra mile for, ahem, diminishing returns. Then later, when they want to rile up the employees again, it will be more difficult. Whereas if UA had waited until they cleaned up their operation a bit, they may have earned greater dividends on the front-line investment.

UA is jumping the gun here.

United makes mistakes every time I fly them. They don't own up to their mistakes. Make my life difficult when trying to get rescheduled due to their mistake. United is a BAD airline. It's the management and their policies. Let's not blame employees.

That is the predominate fallacy in the proposition being asserted.

By most major metrics, UA is the worst airline out there in the U.S. And customers know it.

What amazes me is that people other than Kayakers (who only care about the cheapest price), continue to fly United.

Perhaps if posters who claim UA is not as bad as it is flew other carriers and looked at the entire passenger interaction from planning a trip through each step to retrieving bags at a final destination (including IRROPS), they would understand just how bad UA has become.