This blog series explores two separate experiences related to the airline industry. In Round I, we looked at our COO’s experience with Air Canada. This week, Fonolo’s Digital Marketing Manager describes his interaction with United Airline’s pre-flight customer service. And the experience is quite different indeed.
While the airport and in-flight experience have United, Delta, and JetBlue offering guided meditations to help you chill out and destress, airlines have yet to find an antidote for their, politely put, inadequate customer service.
According to onholdwith.com, airlines are the second worst offenders when it comes to hold times. Customer service has become such an issue for the industry that frustrated lawmakers have given airline industry executives an ultimatum: Improve customer service on their own, or congress will impose tough new customer service laws for them.
So, how can airlines get their pre-flight customer service experience right? While United Airlines is certainly guilty of customer service transgressions (broken guitars and lost children to name a few), a recent United Airlines experience highlights the power of going a little further.
I think it’s fair to say that people feel the need to constantly improve in their career, regardless of their profession. Some may sharpen up on their skills by attending a course, others may sit through a 1-hour webinar, and some may register for a tradeshow. In the case of the customer service profession, we find them to be a verbose group of dedicated blog followers. They love to read about the latest analyst findings, or interesting tips and tricks for how to spice up their support department.
