United Airlines Customer Service Failures

United Airlines Customer Service Failures

            A corporate crisis is referred to as a situation, an event or an initiative that publicly threatens the ability of a company to carry out its business activities effectively. This crisis, if not prevented, or well-handled in case it happens can breed a long-term impediment or disaster to the growth of a business. The handling of such a situation calls for sensitivity to all parties involved while bringing a permanent solution thereof. In this regard, this paper analyses a case study of the United Airlines customers’ service failure.

United Airlines is a passenger Airlines Company which trades on the New York stock exchange and runs its flights across more than four continents. As a result of the incident that occurred in one of the company’s trips – 3411, in 2017, the organization adopted new managerial changes in the procedures, policies, customer service and commitment to become a more customer-friendly airline via its loftier services (Benoit, 2018).

The crisis was revealed by a video taken by passengers of flight 3411 showing a forceful removal of one of the passengers. This crisis emanated when the Chicago airline staff requested that four passengers to volunteer and give up their seats to make room for some United workers who were heading to Louisville. As such, none of the passengers was willing to do so. Consequently, four passengers were unswervingly made to take out their luggage and vacate their seats immediately. Three of them complied while one declined. When the airport police were called, the non-compliant, who had fully paid for his place, was compulsorily dragged down the passageway despite yells of complaints.

The following morning, the company’s Chief Executive Officer dispensed a statement to justify what had happened, terming it as “re-accommodating the customers”, (Migacz et al.,2018) Moreover, he emailed the involved United airline staff applauding their actions. As a result, the incident reminded the general public of the prior mishaps on the mistreatment of passengers’ pets by the same corporation. It arose more attention to the company’s failure to shape a customer-oriented culture (J Weiss, 2017).

In consideration of what the corporate should have done differently to handle the crisis, there was a perfect illustration of the need for a quick response. This is because the company took more than twenty-four hours to respond to the case, and more severely, the response was not sufficient and proved to have betrayed the right understanding of the role of social media in bringing out and amplifying short-comings in company customer services. The Chief Executive Officer should have responded to the crisis immediately condemning the actions of the staff involved, in a bid to portray and safeguard the name and image of the corporate in the eyes of the general public (J Weiss, 2017). Even though the company responded to the case in an acknowledgeable manner after several days, it was too late.  The reputation of the business to the general public and the regulators had been severely damaged.

In conclusion, customer service and handling should be placed as the core objective in any business corporate. In the case where a crisis erupts, immediate response by the management should follow, and such intervention should be sufficient in bringing a desirable solution which should also focus on maintaining friendliness with the customers and the general public at large. Hence, the company’s reputation is safeguarded.

Reference

Benoit, W. L. (2018). Crisis and image repair at United Airlines: Fly the unfriendly skies. Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research, 1(1), 2.

Migacz, S. J., Zou, S., & Petrick, J. F. (2018). The “terminal” effects of service failure on airlines: Examining service recovery with justice theory. Journal of Travel Research, 57(1), 83-98.

Weiss, J. (2017). Ethics and CSR research in top-ranked IS journals, 1980-2013: a developing trend or anomaly