US Airlines Losing It
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 10:59AM 
I just don’t get the growth strategies the US based airlines are trying to pursue. Regardless of what I think, it should be very obvious and clear to everybody that their strategy has nothing to do with improving customer service or experience.
On one hand we have the rest of the world moving towards a service centric and customer focused value model, which improves the customer’s flying experience and provides meaningful amenities for which there is adequate customer-willingness-to-pay. On the other hand, we have the US based airlines that do not give a rat’s ass about customer service or comfort, and would rather take the cheap route of disaggregating the ticket fare and charging for every interaction with the customer. Now I do get that airlines are struggling and need to find new, innovative means to getting back to profitability. But come on, enough with the constant baggage fee hikes! First it was 1 bag for a certain fee, now it’s every bag for a lot bigger share of your wallet. First they blamed the increasing fuel prices, then the increasing security measures and TSA regulations, and now it’s the economy. Next thing you know, you will be required to carry quarters on flight so that you can use their toilets!
My most recent travel experience was flying to India and back (via Europe). As an economy class traveler, I noticed one distinct trend. The farther East you travel, the more pleasant your travel experience is likely to be and the more value you are likely to get for your money. The moment you enter a US airport, you are bound to feel the stress-effect. Be it the agent at the check-in counter, the people manning the security lines, the agents checking your boarding passes, and the most feared of them all, the attendants in your flight. Every one of them will try their best to give you that unwelcome feeling. Try asking them for information and they will give you that look that says “Have you never been on an airplane before?”. The check-in agents want you to use the kiosk and not disturb them while they are having that all important chat with their fellow agents. The security agents will come down upon you as if you have broken some serious laws by forgetting to pack lotions in a zip-lock. The gate agents once again have that “Don’t even think about it!” look on their face. Finally, you step in the plane to experience the worst part of the ordeal. Yeah you have those call-attendant buttons on your armrest but if you did not know this already, they are not meant to be used. Because, if you do dare to press it, chances are that the attendant will not show up. If they show up, it will feel like it’s been an eternity. And then, you will get that look again. And finally when you put in your request, it will be another eternity before your request is serviced.
All of the above improves drastically as you move further east. The European airlines pay a lot more attention to serving their customers with a smile and the Asian airlines are the best of them all. At the Amsterdam airport, when the check-in agent noticed that we were travelling with our 2-yr and 5-yr old, she immediately asked us to step ahead of the line and made a proactive effort to get us bulkhead seats so that there would be extra room for the kids to walk around. Expecting that from a US based airline staff would be out of the question. The European and Asian airline staff are a lot more courteous and accommodating, and they do not make it sound like they are doing you a favor every time they serve you.
From an airline operations point of view, you do want minimal customer interaction with your staff and agents. You want to be running a lean setup and as such, customer interactions with human agents are significant cost drivers. You want your customers to be using all of the online and airport portals and kiosks, before they pick up the phone or approach an onsite agent. I do not have a problem with that as that is right way to approach customer operations. But it should never get to a point where you foster, directly or indirectly, a culture which tells your staff that it is ok to be cold or offhanded to customers. That kind of behavior, attitude, and environment is a recipe for doom, and your customer ratings will decline at a steady clip. The right approach is to look at these human interactions as opportunities to wow the customer, just like you are trying diligently to do with your process and technology innovations. Customers will rate you on the overall, end-to-end experience and lapse on your part at any stage of this experience will hurt you. This is the Holy Grail when it comes to things like customer loyalty and customer retention.
Unfortunately, just like the US economy has taken a dive, so has the US airlines approach to customer service. Consumer spending on services represents a nice chunk of the annual GDP estimates and the airline sector certainly is not helping the economy in that regard. Instead of using it as a key lever for brand differentiation and long term growth, US airlines continue to look at customer interaction as profitability dilution. If the rail network within the US was a lot more established and mature, it could provide the much needed competition to air travel, which would then lead to the kind of travel business transformation the the EU and Asian markets have witnessed.
