How United Airlines’ Customer Service System Ruined My DMA07 Conference (and What Catalogers Can Learn from My Experience)

As the editor of a publication that covers the catalog/multichannel business, I don’t really have any business devoting a column like this to an airline. But having just endured one of the worst nightmares of my life, I believe catalogers who rely on offshore, third-party customer service reps might care to take note.

My saga started on Sunday, Oct. 14, shortly after I arrived at O’Hare Airport in Chicago for the DMA07 conference. As I waited at the baggage claim carousel for my garment bag containing three suits and assorted other precious items (to me), for some reason I thought to look at that little baggage stub they staple to your ticket envelope when you check bags. You know, the strip they wrap around the handle of your luggage. It showed a name and flight number that wasn’t mine. Immediately, I bolted for the lost baggage desk nearby.

The woman there, an American who spoke perfectly good English (and who’d be the last rep I’d be able to understand easily for the next day and a half — and who’d easily understand me), was cold as ice. No apologies, just a curt “fill out this form.” I was bothering her; shame on me. I handed her the wrong bag tag, she tapped her fingers a few times on her keyboard and somehow concluded that my bag never left Westchester Airport in White Plains, N.Y., from which I’d left. She took my filled-out form, added some details of her own, kept my wrong bag tag, circled an 800 number on my half of the form and told me to call that number if I wanted to see how they were progressing in the alleged search for my garment bag.

I asked her about how soon or just how my bag would ever make it there, and she was totally noncommittal. She kept referring me to this oh-so-valuable 800 number and, of course, United’s Web site. I reluctantly made my way for the cab line at O’Hare.

No Hope in Sight

After I checked into the hotel and alerted the bell captain of my brewing nightmare, it didn’t take me long to make the first of what would be about 15 calls I’d make to that 800 number over the course of the next two days. It also didn’t take me long to realize that the reps weren’t from the United States, or more importantly, English wasn’t their first language. Naturally, when you dial that number, the first thing you get is automated call prompts. Usually, United wants you to punch in some numbers to hear an automated response. I quickly learned that if I hit the “0” button about 10 times, I could get to a real person.

Having placed my first call to the 800 number at about 5:45 that Sunday afternoon, I continued to call the number about once an hour until 2:15 a.m. Sunday night/Monday morning. Around midnight that evening, realizing the search for my bag was going nowhere thus far, I made my way to a 24-hour supermarket in downtown Chicago to get toiletries to make it through the night.

In my last call to New Delhi Sunday night, the rep said my bag hadn’t been found at O’Hare, and the Westchester Airport was closed for the night but would be open the next morning at 7:00 a.m. So I set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. (central time) and tried to get some sleep. Less than four hours later, the alarm went off. I called the 800 number once more, and the rep actually was able to reach the White Plains Airport (or so the rep said, after having me on hold for five minutes), only to find out my bag wasn’t there. Nobody seemed to know where my bag was.

I spent the better part of Monday continuing to call the 800 number, only to get nowhere fast. “I’ll send an urgent message,” was the typical response from the New Delhi-based reps.

Forced to Break the Marshall Field’s ‘Picket Line’

With no hope for my bag to be found anytime soon, at about 11 a.m. I interrupted my day to begrudgingly cross the imaginary picket line Chicagoans set up in front of the old Marshall Field’s store on State Street. It was Macy’s-ized last year as part of its parent firm’s attempt at creating a “Macy’s Nation.” (I’ll dig into that whole thing another time; juicy stuff.) It was the closest store I could find to get some clothes to get me through the conference.

Seeing that I was getting nowhere, I began to think outside the box a little. My beloved wife Donna offered to drive over to Westchester Airport on Monday afternoon to see if she could get a real person to take some real action. She did get a United clerk involved, but he also came up empty-handed. By Monday night, there was still no sign of my bag and I didn’t feel I was any closer to finding it.

Tuesday morning, after some meetings (and constantly having to whine to people about my ordeal — how annoying that became!), my frustration hit a boiling point. No matter how hard I tried, how deep I looked, I couldn’t find another phone number to reach anybody at United. The airline’s Web site gives some non-800 numbers, but you can’t reach real people. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I knew United had moved its corporate office into R.R. Donnelley’s old headquarters on West Wacker Drive. So, I decided to do a Michael Moore and storm the ivory tower.

I delivered my story to the security guard at the front door, and he led me to United’s own security people in the lobby. At first, a woman told me, “We have nobody here who deals with baggage losses,” and I said I wanted to speak with a vice president or the CEO or somebody who was empowered to take some action. She said she’d contact her supervisor, and about five minutes later a kind man came down to talk to me. He took all my information down and promised to make some calls to try to resolve the matter.

About three hours later, during a DMA press conference (for which I must belatedly apologize to Peter Johnston for allowing my phone to go off right in the middle of his presentation), I bolted out of the session to answer my phone. A United employee in the Chicago office said she had located my bag at, you guessed it, O’Hare Airport. It had apparently been there for the past day or two, but because of United’s idiotic system, nobody had the wherewithal to identify it until then. By Tuesday night, my bag was delivered to my hotel.

Now that I hopefully (or not) entertained you with my sad little saga, let’s get back to my whole ordeal with United’s 800 number and the points I’d like to make to multichannel merchants. I don’t blame the people who handle these calls. They’re doing their jobs, following orders and reading the scripts that some idiot from United gives them. Here’s the real problem: The reason I placed so many calls is two-fold: These people don’t understand English! They recite the lines they have in front of them:

We’re sorry for your inconvenience, now can I put you on hold for approximately three to five minutes? Thank you.

I could probably tell you, word for word, how a conversation with one of these reps would go, because I’ve almost memorized their script.

United’s Seriously Flawed System

Although the consumer in me would be quick to jump all over the phone reps or their local employer as the cause of this mess, the better-knowing business thinker in me knows the real culprit is United. The way United has reps set up in their jobs — either by itself or through an third-party service firm — they’re unable to carry on like real people. They’re like wind-up dolls. And the idiots at United do the winding up. The reps are empowered to do little more than send text messages, repeat the information they have on you and apologize. It’s the boneheads at United who created this flawed system and who cause frustrated flyers like me to scream at these poor reps when, deep inside, you know they’re doing all they’re empowered to do.

The other major flaw in the system is you can’t really determine when a rep doesn’t understand what you’re saying. For at least half, if not three-quarters, of my calls to that 800 number, I hung up realizing nothing had been accomplished because the rep didn’t understand my situation. Again, this is because the reps follow very tight scripts and only are able to do very few things. Apparently, they’re forbidden to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you said.”

What This Means to You

So now, let’s turn this week’s column into a learning experience for you. I’m not suggesting that offshore, third-party customer service is a bad thing at all. I know it’s a healthy cost saver for a company like United, having emerged from Chapter 11 just last year. And I’m sure United’s reps are capable of handling problems. But they need the power to handle such problems.

So, if you also farm out your customer service inquiries to an offshore, third-party customer service firm or even a domestic one, I strongly advise you to revisit the system you or your partner firm have set up. Ask the following questions:

1. What are the reps empowered to do and what can’t they do? For instance, if a customer calls complaining that the blender she bought broke and cut her finger, are your reps empowered to do more than simply say “I’m very sorry for your inconvenience” and give her an address to return the blender? That injured customer is going to need someone to give her some compassion quickly.

2. Do your reps have access to American-based supervisors? United’s don’t; or at least, that’s what they told me. They don’t even know the phone number of United’s corporate headquarters. That’s not just because they don’t know it; it’s because United doesn’t want them to know it. Let your reps channel calls to American-based supervisors who can put customers at ease about problems getting solved.

3. Do the reps speak and understand English perfectly?

4. Are they too reliant on scripts? Scripts have their place, but confining reps— regardless of whether they’re offshore or local — to a set of phrases is insane. Give them flexibility to see problems to the finish line.

I felt badly getting so testy with the New Delhi-based reps at United. It certainly wasn’t their fault. It was the system’s fault. Speaking strictly as a consumer who’s been through the ordeal I’ve been through, third-party customer service makes me uneasy. But from a business standpoint, I truly believe it can work, regardless of whether the reps are based in India, the United States or wherever. The key, however, is for you to oversee the operation personally to ensure these reps are representing your company properly and taking appropriate care of your customers.