It has been months since Dr. David Dao was physically assaulted to leave
United Flight #3411. I wonder what happened
internally at United since April 9.
I tried to write about this when it first occurred. Those blogs didn’t seem to add to
the conversation. My rant wasn’t about the
employees, because they were following policy and not trained in alternatives. And because the employees were following United’s policy my rant was with the executive leadership team who created the
policies.
Specifically, there was a rant about CEO Oscar Munoz’s
response to customers. Being a United loyalty
member, I received his email explaining the situation. It sounded more, “Oops,
we got caught. We have a poor unfriendly
customer policy, and now we realize it.” If there had been no video of the altercation, as three other customers peacefully left the flight, this poor policy would not have changed.
That’s not helpful and adds to the negativity that currently
circles the service industry.
The Gurus’ Solution
What I believe happened at United is there was a policy
written on overbooked flights, but there were not practical procedures written to enforce it,
or procedures that encouraged creativity what to do if no passengers took the highest incentive offered.
Short-Term - Train Employees on Creatively Solving an Overbooked Flight
If the incentive went high enough, someone would have left
the plane. Alternatively, how could the
United employees on the flight been rerouted, if truly no passengers would leave? The classic Service Recovery solution is to
simply ask the customer, “What do you want?”
What misses so many times in Service Recovery situations, the
employees are not put through “What If” scenarios. United’s operation leaders should write
several “What If” scenarios, with the company’s ideal response, and distribute
them through their normal communication channels. It doesn’t have to be a proper in class
training, although ideal, but just communication is a huge help to employees
unsure what to do.
Rewrite your policy and procedures WITH the employees
closest to the situation's input. Policies
tend to be written by the leadership team who rarely deal with customers. Their considerations are more financial or
quantitative driven, and not always practical when handling customers. It is one thing to write a policy, it is something
different to tell a customer to their face they are not getting what they
want.
The gate team is the subject matter expert. They have seen it all, and have smart ideas how
to solve it for next time. Use their
knowledge to create smart policies and procedures that are fiscally responsible
and customer friendly. It is absolutely
possible to have both.
Final Thoughts
To develop strong policies and procedures is a good practice
for any service industry. Seriously, in
my career, I have never seen an employee who didn’t desire to do the right thing
by the customer or the company. It
always came down to lack of knowledge and lack of training for the “What if,”
situations.
It’s a relatively easy fix, and it saves your organization embarrassment
and certainly a huge pay-out.
Do the right thing.
