flyinbob

See it here.

Hadn't seen this before. I'm not sure how to react. ^

travelsavant

Disney+United! next thing will be Pixar making inflight animation videos, which upon reflection might be a good thing!

mahasamatman

Not enough money in it. That's why Pixar stopped making commercials, too.

lucky9876coins

A friend told me about this, and I couldn't stop laughing about it. UA talks about cutting costs, and then they send employees 1,000 miles away to learn that good customer service includes making eye contact and smiling? Hahahaha!

CosmosHuman

Also the "furlough" of nearly 1000 pilots as well.

Oy vegh!

drummingcraig

Pretty ridiculous if you ask me. It strikes me as odd that you have to teach your front line employees how to be polite and friendly towards the customers. If they didn't know that to begin with, they shouldn't have been hired.

The only thing UA should be trying to learn from Disney is how to better control/discipline its employees. @:-)

sunil

Every company has these biz trip junkets for employees. I'm sure the employees had a good time and had to come up with a few key learnings like smiling alot .

Perhaps not a good time to be advertising these trips while they're laying off employees

MileageAddict

+1

I couldn't have said it any better. ^

UALfromMSN

Didn't the new head of customer relations, Pam Coslet(I'm spelling it wrong) come to UA from Disney? Maybe they're seeing that talking about how to treat customers in the abstract of a classroom wasn't cutting it, so they're sending a few people on junkets to WDW and Epcot to see it firsthand.

If it gets a few more agents to smile throughout the day, then I'm all for it, even in light of the furloughs and layoffs. Give the people still on the job a morale boost, "invest in their future" so to speak.

JeffS

There are a few companies that 'do' customer service right. Disney and Marriott come immediately to mind. So sending people to a Disney seminar on customer satisfaction makes sense to me.

Given all the complaints here, some valid and some just plain whiny, how it this somehow not a good idea? I'll grant you that some people will never change learned behavior, but what about the people who've never been taught good customer satisfaction skills? You'd be surprised at how this can turn around someone who might not have performed as well prior.

At least UA is trying to do address customer satisfaction with front line employees.

phaka2

Trips like these are generally perks for the workforce that hopefully yield positive results and improved performance. I see nothing wrong in that.

lucky9876coins

Actually Barbara Higgins, the VP of Customer Experience, did come from Disney.

abmj-jr

No, Ms. Coslet has been with UA for years. Barbara Higgins came over from Disney to help improve things. Good luck to her. She is going to need it.

Edit - Damn!! Nobody can beat Lucky in on stuff like this.

PVDProf

Say what you will about the evil mouse empire, but they do a few things better than really anyone else, and with a huge, diverse client base.

One of those things is lines. I would rather be in line at Disneyworld than anywhere else, and I can't count the number of times I've been in a UA line and wished they were managed as well as Disney's. (The Disneyland->LAX T7 contrast is particularly shocking.)

Another of those things is unfailingly helpful, efficient customer service, with high-turnover, short-time cheap employees. Career CS should be able to do at least as well, but somehow that never seems to work; there must be something Disney knows, and I sure wouldn't mind if UA tried to learn some of it. If it's an incentive junket to inspire the CSRs, all the better.

Yet another thing Disney does well is have costumed characters and ompah bands appear seemingly out of nowhere from secret entrances to make walking around their parks seem more festive and enjoyable. Maybe if UA could learn some of that, and use some of those mysterious doors at ORD. That, now that, would really enhance the flying experience.

TA

I have had some correspondence with G. Atkinson of UA management about their customer service lines, especially during irreg ops when they are absolutely overflowing, moving at a snail's pace, and no one is using the EasyChickens to help out. (ever seen IAD concourse C service desk after a cancellation?)

The bottom line I have described to him, and he agreed, is that people need to be given good information about the alternative to standing in line, and be given a good way in their mind to get out of line without being put at a disadvantage. People aren't completely stupid -- they just have no good alternative presented to them. So they will keep standing there, no matter how much the agents want them to use the Chickens. Desire != action.

The solution I believe: a simple numbered ticket system handled by a floating agent (who also dispenses quick advice), so that you are freed from the line yet able to come back in the same place if you need, where you can then give the chickens a try if you like (and told that there is actually a person on the end of the phone line who can help you just like in the physical line). Or in addition, give people the info that they can call UA on their phones while they're waiting, have their new itineraries ready for them on the machines, and save everyone time. Let them know that waiting in line will not get them a hotel room in case of weather delays, or other reasons they might want to stand in that line.

Coupled with signs that tell you that the chickens can actually help you get rebooked faster than people standing in line, that the agents on the phone have the same info as the ones in line, etc, I think this could work. Most of all, for UA, it would save them staffing and customer anger, and give them some return on their sunk costs in those machines and call centers.

Here's hoping they actually do something with the admittedly amateur advice.

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one thing different about Disneyland, though -- their employees only have to impersonate Goofy, not learn the intricacies of airline operations. And they can be fired on a whim.