United Airlines Are Learning

Gary Stark

Too often we are greeted with bad service or a bad attitude, or somebody just not doing it right. And when we encounter that, we speak about it, we bleat about it, we complain about it … and occasionally, we may be heard, and those who are doing it wrong take on board the message and start to do it right.

But how often do we note when they’re doing it right? Acknowledge the change, the improvement … in a public forum? Not often enough, I’m afraid, and I don’t think that’s a good thing: if we’re going to be willing to put the boot in when they screw up, we should be equally vocal when they get something right.

So, following my recent trip to the USofA, there were a couple of loose ends that need to be tied up. A couple of my flight segments haven’t yet been credited to my frequent flier account. Similarly, I need to submit details of my car rental agreements to gain the points for those transactions as well.

But when I went to United’s website to find the procedures etc, I was redirected to the car rental company’s website, only to find out that the targeted link no longer resolved to the specified site. “Page not found” was the error.

So I sent a note of to United’s Customer Support team, letting them know of what I’d experienced, with a request that they should address the problem.

Here’s the start of their response email, received within one business day …

“Hello Mr. Stark,

We’re always glad to hear from Mileage Plus members like you. Thanks for writing.
We’ve had some technical issues which has caused longer-than-usual response times. We’re very sorry for the delay and for the difficulty that you had while trying to request credit for the car rental.
To request credit for your … “
While this does nothing at all to directly address the issue I faced, there’s a couple of points here that are worth noting:
First of all, the response was prompt: I received this within less than one business day. Too many organisations seem to think that the traditional response times – snail mail response times extending into weeks – are satisfactory when dealing with email queries.
Quite frankly, they are not. Three days would be the maximum, I believe; anything longer and your living in the dark ages.
Or probably dying, as an organisation.
And just look at how this email starts: We’re always glad to hear from members like you. How pleasant is that? Yes, it’s only words, and it’s most likely a boilerplate response, but the point here is that it’s pleasant, and it welcomes your query.
This is such a turnaround for United, given their form in United Breaks Guitars, and I welcome this.