An Email from United's New CEO

tonyw

tonyw

Well-Known Member
First, we must focus on our customers. Getting you to your destination, on schedule, can make or break your ability to succeed in a work endeavor or to hug a family member at an important moment. If our performance has not met your expectations, I want you to know I'm committed to learning how to better meet your needs and desires.
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Second, it's all about teamwork. To get you where you want to go safely and happily requires thousands of us working together with a shared purpose.
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Third, this is a company and an industry that demands innovation. We are embracing the changes, and will continue to innovate with the goal of providing our customers better performance

Know what's missing?

Something about treating the employees well. Treat your employees well and they will take care of the customers, which means your shareholders will benefit.

Dump on them, like pretty much the entire airline industry, and you end up with people who do just enough to keep from getting fired.

And airline management wonders why the companies they run are ranked right with cable companies for horrible service?
 
This is the exact culture of the company (a non-airline which most of you probably have money invested with) I just left. If it doesn't help the bottom line, management isn't interested.
 
Ayork62493 said:
It's so rare that I actually deal with a real airline employee at the ticket counters or anything nowadays. They can't even figure out how to switch my seat if I ask. Now that's customer service
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That's because they went from FastAir, which was arguably the most intuitive and easy to use and explore reservations system in use by a major airline, to Shares which is a native language solid pile of 1970s donkey crap. "Synergies". That, and agents are terrified they might put someone in "Economy Plus" since switching someone to an E+ seat "on the house" that was going out empty to accommodate a window/aisle or family seating request went from "Meh, whatever" when I left in early 2011 to "WE WILL IMPALE YOU ON A 40 FOOT STAKE AT THE GATES AS AN EXAMPLE TO THE OTHERS ABOUT NOT COLLECTING THAT $19" when Jeffy was missing a few pennies one day.
 
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ChasenSFO said:
That's because they went from FastAir which was arguably the most intuitive and easy to use and explore reservations systems in use by a major airline to Shares which is a native language solid pile of 1970s donkey crap. "Synergies". That, and agents are terrified they might put someone in "Economy Plus" since switching someone to an E+ seat "on the house" that was going out empty to accommodate a window/aisle or family seating request went from "Meh, whatever" when I left in early 2011 to "WE WILL IMPALE YOU ON A 40 FOOT STAKE AT THE GATES AS AN EXAMPLE TO THE OTHERS NEXT ABOUT NOT COLLECTING THAT $19" when Jeffy was missing a few pennies one day.
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I just left Delta and I can assure you that it was the same for us as well. Delta is getting rid of DLTERM which agents use almost 24/7 to override the system or ...pretty much do whatever they want. When I started working gates, it quickly got switched to SNAPP, which gives you almost NO authority to override. Show up past 30 minutes? Sorry, you're screwed. 4 bags? Sorry, you're screwed. Want to upgrade ahead of someone? Want to be listed for an earlier flight? Want to be moved to a flight 6 hours ahead from now? The smallest things that I knew how to do on blue screen (DLTERM), was NOT in the new Delta system and to be honest I have no idea how they're gonna figure it out either. I was always just instructed by my managers and higher authorities training at Delta classes in various hubs that we needed to learn the new system now. Also, if I upgraded someone ahead of the list, people supposedly would monitor it and you could easily get a call from corporate asking what you just did. Then they put a block in the system (I believe) so if you were 15 on the list, I had to seat all 14 ahead of you or the computer would just pop up and pretty much say "you suck, try again".

The entire jumpseat process was also done through blue screen (DLTERM) as well. There wasn't even an option to do it through their new program SNAPP. Supposedly, Richard Anderson says DLTERM will be removed from the passenger fronting computers so hopefully their customer service doesn't fall off the map of the earth like it did to United. I have a feeling a wave of angry people will be coming when the agents look stupid because the system created by the company literally won't let them do anything. It's hard to explain to people too because they automatically assume I'm just an idiot who doesn't know how to do his job. Nobody even had an idea it was just a college job and maybe someday soon I'll be flying their next plane. Needless to say, I've made some people pretty angry because I "didn't know what I was doing".... lol ...yeah I definitely don't miss it.
 
tcco, good information to know. I have not been in your position but have certainly been frustrated by ticket and gate agents that seemed like they "did not know what they were doing." My workaround was to call the 1K desk at United that more often than not fixed the problem or at least made it better.

Treating your employees well seems to be a point of improvement many companies need to embrace. Funny how when you treat them poorly, set unrealistic goals, or under pay them, customer service and operations suffer.

One of the frequent flier blogs I tend to follow share this perspective at what needs to be done at UA:

http://thepointsguy.com/2015/09/10-changes-from-united/

I most certainly tend to agree with those suggestions.
 
Unfortunately it seems to be becoming more and more rare to start at the bottom and work your way up now. Having folks who have front line experience with the jobs their employees are being asked to do is far less common than it used to be. Now it seems to be more MBA drones pushing pencils and looking at spreadsheets. You can't teach things like treat employees well in school. It is a philosophy that comes from working on the front line and being at the bottom of the hill that the sh*t rolls down. You take things like that with you and become a more rounded leader as you work your way up the ladder.

I understand controlling cost and trying to stay competitive. But employees aren't numbers and never will be. Investing in them does wonders but most of those cant be measured in dollars and cents in a quarterly report.
 
I'm a few credits short of a bachelors in business and I'll tell you, not a single bit of attention is spent on how to motivate people or get their best out of them.

And maybe it shouldn't, I don't know. But if you're going to be an effective leader, you need to look more toward the Craig Jeleniks than the Jack Welchs.
 
Runincolorado said:
Treating your employees well seems to be a point of improvement many companies need to embrace. Funny how when you treat them poorly, set unrealistic goals, or under pay them, customer service and operations suffer.
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I was at a smaller airport where I went to college but we did have United/Delta/Horizon. I can tell you I felt like I was always treated fairly and respectably by my company. We even got raises to make us the highest paid agents for our Northwest Region at $13 starting. It definitely helps to be treated well with quarterly bonuses and paid incentives to increase the customer service numbers. For a young college kid like myself it really taught me to keep working harder for more money. I did leave with almost the amount I'll be making as a flight instructor hourly, except as a ramp agent it was clock in time so way more hours and money.

My friends and old friends at United were treated very poorly. I am not sure if it's like that for United employees nation wide but besides them deciding to close and then not close, and then outsource ramp and not above win, and then cutting benefits, and then ultimately what they decided to do was just cut their pay pretty drastically. Thankfully they were all so positive but some employees with United for over 20+ years left. It became so bad, they'd work the ramp of 320s with 1 person at my airport some flights. Anyways, I know it's a money issue to pay employees but I felt so bad for them.

When I started, their staff was employed by almost 60-70% of people who had been with United for 15-20 years. When I left my airport job a few months ago, their staff was almost 60% new employees this year. I just found it sad and I have no idea how their pilot side is and if they're happy. I sure hope so because if any of the other employees for United were treated like what I saw at my small airport, I'd feel extremely bad.
 
Derg said:
I'm a few credits short of a bachelors in business and I'll tell you, not a single bit of attention is spent on how to motivate people or get their best out of them. And maybe it shouldn't, I don't know. But if you're going to be an effective leader, you need to look more toward the Craig Jeleniks than the Jack Welchs.
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I'm finishing a degree in economics, which is a school of business program, and in fairness, they did have a class devoted to that. The problem was that what they were teaching was largely psychobabble BS.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
I'm finishing a degree in economics, which is a school of business program, and in fairness, they did have a class devoted to that. The problem was that what they were teaching was largely psychobabble BS.
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B-schools are teaching this: I've read quite a few case studies on organizations where treating employees well has created a competitive advantage. In... say the property management business... I imagine new business is won on referrals and strong client relationships.

The problem is that airlines have a "Neccessary Evil" structure, which I think reverberates down to employee relationships:

http://www.slate.com/articles/busin..._why_americans_hate_isps_cable_companies.html

It's crazy to see how customer service is completely different in the charter/fractional world.
 
Soku39 said:
The kind of teamwork where every outstation had a different company/contract every 2 weeks?
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Vaguebook time.

Once upon a time at a particular airport that I had consistent problems with, one of the "higher ups" at that station came to the gate to tell me all about his position of authority with certain "below the wing" operational things in the middle of a operational failure.

I told him that I was glad he dropped by, notified him that what we were undergoing was a regular occurrence and at some point you can't use the "well, they're minimum wage workers" excuse when so much of the operation depends on their performance.

You're going to run into micro-CEO's of small domains that have more pride than utility, but come on man, don't brag about your epicurian skills when you've just screwed up preparing a basic bologna sandwich.
 
Very few business realize that if you take care of your employee, your employees will take care of your customers. All to often, management today is just concerned with the bottom line and and how to get an extra penny or two added to that dividend check. A happy employ who enjoys coming to work and is empowered to help customers will do so and take that extra step to help the customer.
 
Derg said:
I'm a few credits short of a bachelors in business and I'll tell you, not a single bit of attention is spent on how to motivate people or get their best out of them.

And maybe it shouldn't, I don't know. But if you're going to be an effective leader, you need to look more toward the Craig Jeleniks than the Jack Welchs.
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My wife and I have always insisted that our kids play sports for just this reason. As I tell them I learned more about leadership on the football and lacrosse fields than I did from any Army leadership course. If one looks at successful leaders, both in the private sector and government, almost all of them played sports. Granted, there are some exceptions, primarily in the tech sector, but I am talking generalities.
I think this is even more important in the customer service industry, and, in spite of what many pilots might think we are not in the business of flying airplanes. We are in the customer service industry.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
I'm finishing a degree in economics, which is a school of business program, and in fairness, they did have a class devoted to that. The problem was that what they were teaching was largely psychobabble BS.
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Most economics syllabi I've seen deal more with the technical/theory side of economics rather than the application to management.
 
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