Customer service in the Knowledge Economy

We hear continually about the "problems" of the airlines. I had a few problems with an airline myself yesterday as thunderstorms buffeted the East Coast and snarled up traffic.

I was trying to leave Manchester, Vermont and get back to Roanoke, Virginia. Under normal conditions, the two leg journey (through Dulles in D.C.) takes just four hours. Yesterday, it took ten hours, mostly for no good reason.

Knowing the weather was causing problems, I showed up at the Manchester airport about four hours before my scheduled flight. At the ticket counter, United refused to book me on an earlier flight unless I paid $100 extra. I persisted, and I was told I could try standby for no extra fee, so I opted for that. I went through security and went up to the gate where the earlier flight was leaving, and discovered that the noon flight to Dulles was just getting loaded (four hours late...a bad sign).

I tried getting on, but the gate attendants refused to talk to several of us on later flights that wanted to get out. Talking among ourselves, we decided it was a lost cause, and a couple businesspeople left to go get some dinner. I lingered at the counter for another minute, and a different gate attendant walked up and asked if anyone else needed to go to D.C. I stepped up, and she said, "Oh, you need to go on this flight, because your flight is canceled." Huh? I'd been at this gate for nearly an hour, and no announcement had been made. When did they plan to tell me? She changed my ticket and put me on the plane, which had at least a dozen empty seats. They held the plane a bit longer, and filled all the seats. So far, so good, I figured...I'd get home tonight.

When I got to Dulles, I tried to repeat that. I went to the gate where an earlier Roanoke flight (late) was leaving. They had just started boarding, and I counted only about fifteen people getting on a fifty seat regional jet. Several of us tried to get rebooked on the flight, but the gate attendants ignored us. Finally the flight left, and I was able to get one of them to direct me to the gate where my flight was leaving.

I had to walk a very long way and take not one but two shuttle buses to get there--about twenty minutes. When I arrived at the commuter terminal, I tried to check in, and was told that my flight was canceled. The attendant said I could take two USAir flights (through Pittsburgh) to get home, but she could not make the changes. I would have to go to customer service in the main terminal. I rushed back to the main terminal, only to find that at least 150 people were in line for the customer service desk, and it did not appear to be moving at all--only three people were working there.

In desperation, I went to a nearby gate and asked a gate attendant to help, who informed me it was too late to get switched to the USAir flights, and she gave me a reduced rate hotel pass for the night. You have to call a number to book a room, and the service rep there laughed hysterically when I said I was in D.C. They had given out all their reduced rate rooms hours ago. I called around to some local hotels, but everything within twenty miles was booked; it was going to be a $60 cab ride each way to get to a hotel that had a room.

I then checked with a cop in the terminal, who told me it would likely take at least two and a half hours to get through security in the morning; I'd have to get up about 4:30 AM to make my 8:30 flight. I rented a car and drove the four hours back to the Roanoke Airport to get my own car, and got home about 1 AM.

The customer service at United was apallingly bad, and for no good reason. There was an utter failure, with their fully automated scheduling system, to provide passengers with timely information. I believe it is deliberate, so that passengers don't try to make alternate arrangements; I've seen it happen too many times to believe it is just accidental or unintentional.

United and the other major airlines have preposterous rules about changing flights. If you ask them why it costs $100 to change a flight, you get a lot of mumbo jumbo about how it messes up their system. Um, we're talking about a few bits, literally, of data. If the system is designed right, it should take about fifteen seconds to move a customer from one flight to another. Southwest Airlines, one of the few profitable airlines, has a very simple policy--once you have a ticket, you can go on any flight to your destination, and it takes just a few seconds to make the change.

So it can be done, and done without great cost. Finally, my experience at Dulles was absurd. They had a plane going to Roanoke half empty, and customers who they were going to have haul there the next day if they did not get out that evening. Why on earth, with the flight already very late, did they not load as many people as possible on that flight and get them out of their hair?

In my opinion, the airlines have, in part, a serious IT problem. They've been saddled with ridiculously complex management systems that satisfy corporate beancounters but make life terribly difficult for their own employees, and worse, alienate their customers. The airlines are proof-positive that information technology does not automatically fix your problems; in fact, it can make them much, much worse.

I've said it before--too many IT folks like complex systems because it increases IT budgets, justifies large staff expenditures, and gives them de facto control of the organization. It's just plain wrong, and wastes a lot of time and money (and some businesses go bankrupt).

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