Marketing Musings: United, It's The Service Stupid

What are United Airlines missing these days? Nah, I don’t mean seats that actually have cushioning, food that you can eat (in First Class) or flights that are not cancelled, I am talking about hospitality. The raw basics of dealing with paying customers in a way that has proven over time to attract, retain and generally delight them. Now an enterprise as large as United is always going to make mistakes and have things just go plain wrong, but the way they deal with these problems has descended to a point where it is barely recognizable as customer service.
Turning again to Danny Meyer’s book Setting the Table, he gives us “Five A’s for Effectively Addressing Mistakes”. Let’s take a look:

• Awareness – Many mistakes go unaddressed because no one is even aware they have happened. If you’re not aware, you’re nowhere.
• Acknowledgement – “Our server had an accident, and we are going to prepare a new plate for you as quickly as possible:
• Apology – “I am sorry this happened to you.” Alibis are not one fo the Five A’s. It is not appropriate or useful to make excuses (“We’re short staffed.”)
• Action – “Please enjoy this for now. We’ll have your fresh order out in just a few minutes.” Say what you are going to do to make amends and follow through.
• Additional Generosity – “Unless the mistake has something to do with slow timing, I would have my staff send out something additional…Some more serious mistakes warrant a complimentary dish or meal.

Now let’s run United “customer service” through the Five A’s:

• Awareness – with fewer staff and an attitude of “you get what you pay for” most staff are not actively seeking to fulfill on a promise of hospitality. Doing the minimum has become the norm which means there are very few opportunities even discovered to delight customers.
• Acknowledgement – following on from awareness, you can’t acknowledge what you don’t know about.
• Apology – whilst canned apologies are the norm, excuses are rife. There is a reason behind everything but it is never a personal apology that customers receive.
• Action – without any provisions, coupons for discounts on food, beverage or flights, or other “we messed up “ rewards United staff are simply not empowered to take any action. A broken seat? Sorry, there are no other spare seats and nothing else we can do for you.
• Additional Generosity – unless it’s due to United overbooking a flight, I have not seen an act of outbound generosity in many years.

But United are still recovering from bankruptcy I hear you say…that is true and the organization itself is undergoing a massive shift. But when it is all said and done, customer service is what keeps people coming back and United need to hire a VP from Danny Meyer’s restaurant group before it’s all too late...

Marketing Musings: Setting the Table

A friend of mine just lent me a booked called Setting the Table by Danny Meyer. Danny is a successful restaurateur/entrepreneur in New York City who has been in business since the 80’s and now has over 10 highly successful hospitality businesses. What I liked best about Setting the Table was Danny’s approach to customer service – no excuses are tolerated for service that is not first class. In Week 39 I asked if it were possible to systematize employee behavior. Danny has moved on from this – the system is the culture in his group and through proper training, every employee understands what they need to do. This excerpt from the book illustrates the somewhat empowered environment and how at the same time, the business is present for every customer:

“Hospitality cannot flow from a monologue. I instruct my staff members to figure out whatever it takes to make guest feel and understand that we are in their corner. I don’t tell staff precisely what to do or say in every scenario, though I do have some pet peeves that I don’t ever want to hear in our dining rooms. I cringe when a waiter asks, “How is everything?” That’s an empty question that will get an empty response. Also, I can’t stand the use of we to mean you, as in “How are we doing so far?” I abhor the question, “Are you still working on the lamb?” If the guest has been working on the lamb, it probably wasn’t very tender or very good in the first place. And if a guest says “Thank you” for something, the waiter should not answer, “No problem.” Since when is it necessary to deny that delivering excellent service is a “problem”? A genuine “You’re welcome” is always the appropriate response.”

Setting the Table, Danny Meyer.

Marketing Musings: Is the Tipping Point Toast?

Finding your audience in this fragmented media environment driving you crazy? You just have to find influencers right? Wrong… according to an Aussie researcher now working at Yahoo. Definitely an interesting position in this “Tipping Point” focused world.

Here is an excerpt:

Gladwell's book laid out many other factors that can "tip" a trend. He described other influential types: Mavens, who love to collect information and help others make decisions, and suave Salesmen of ideas. In order to spread, an idea or product had to be "sticky," and appear in a fertile social context. But as The Tipping Point climbed the charts, marketers fixated on Gladwell's Law of the Few, his suggestion that rare, highly connected people shape the world. For anyone involved in pitchmanship, it was an electrifying notion, one that took a highly complex phenomenon--the spread of memes through society--and made it simple. Reach the gatekeepers, and you reach the world.

Marketers seized on Malcolm Gladwell's "Law of the Few," his suggestion That rare, highly connected people shape the world. But Watts, for one, didn't think the gatekeeper model was true. It certainly didn't match what he'd found studying networks. So he decided to test it in the real world by remounting the Milgram experiment on a massive scale. In 2001, Watts used a Web site to recruit about 61,000 people, then asked them to ferry messages to 18 targets worldwide. Sure enough, he found that Milgram was right: The average length of the chain was roughly six links. But when he examined these pathways, he found that "hubs"--highly connected people--weren't crucial. Sure, they existed. But only 5% of the email messages passed through one of these superconnectors. The rest of the messages moved through society in much more democratic paths, zipping from one weakly connected individual to another, until they arrived at the target.

The full Fast Company article is here.

Marketing Musings: It's the Details!

Do the details really matter? Throughout the Weekly Program I have repeated just how important attention to detail is and why you must constantly revisit, refine and communicate. But why you ask? Instinctively we all like a clean environment, courteous staff and prompt service but is that the real reason to put so much effort into the “details”?

Last night I read one of the most profound statements I have seen in years. The author is Dr Paddi Lund and the book is called “The Absolutely Critical Non-Essentials”. Paddi captures the “details” dilemma in just 18 amazing words….

“Customers judge your expertise in areas they do not understand by your excellence in areas which they do”.

Wow.

You mean all this time I have been focusing ALL of my effort on being a mechanic /baker/ electrician/ accountant (the list goes on!) my customers have been judging me by the sign hanging out front, the quality of the coffee I serve them, the waiting room magazines, the oil stained carpet (this list also goes on!)?

In a word, Yep. Revisit Week 42. I’ve called it “not falling at the last hurdle” but from here out think of all these things as Critical Non-Essentials.