Are You Experienced?

Posted on | November 4, 2009 | No Comments

“Have you ever been experienced…  Well I have….”  Immortal words from Jimi Hendrix in his song, “Are You Experienced?”…

My two recent customer experiences with American Airlines kind of made me feel like I ate the brown acid at Woodstock and I was on a “bad trip”

Experience #1

I had a round trip to Silicon Valley and back.  When I went to check-in online the night before leaving (so I could use the cool iPhone boarding pass) I was disturbed to see that the seat assignment I made weeks before was blank and I was not allowed to check-in.  No big deal.  It said I needed to check-in at the ticket counter when arriving at the airport.  Sooooo…  I left for O’Hare early the next morning to try and get the best seat from the pool released the day of the flight.  After waiting in line for twenty minutes I got to the counter and relayed my story.  The guy at the counter said, “Sorry sir, I can’t give you a seat assignment.”  I said WHAT!?  He said “The agent has already taken control of the flight.”  I looked at him with a puzzled look and repeated what he said and just shook my head in confusion and disappointment.  He then half-way checked me in so I could get through security, but I now needed to stand in line at the gate.

When I got to the gate I waited for a minute or two and got up to the counter.  The woman at the counter greeted me and asked me what I needed.  I said “I need a seat.”  She then asked me why, I repeated the whole story and she said, “Who checked you in?”  I said, “I don’t know the guy at the counter”.  She said “let me look”.  Then proceeded to rant at me about how this guy is trained as a supervisor, he does this all the time and nobody ever reports him, etc…”  I said “so he should have given me a seat?”  She said “YES!”  Then she continues to rail on this guy at me, writes his name down and says I should report him.  I thought to myself… Why is this bad employee my problem?  Why is she bringing me into the internal politics of the O’Hare American Airlines staff?  After she got me a seat (The very last row in the back of the plane next to the lavatory and the kitchen) I said “You know, now I know why Southwest Airlines is the only airline making any money.”  She said, “You are entitled to your opinion and I don’t care.  I just go where the money is!.”  I assumed this meant she was part of an acquisition or just got a job with American because they are hiring or whatever.  Regardless, this is one of the worst customer experiences I have had in a long time…

Experience # 2

Upon returning from my Silicon Valley trip me, my wife and my 20 month old daughter all became very ill.  The guy next to me on the flight home looked like he might pass out the entire way.  It reminded me of Monty Python’s “Bring Out Your Dead”.  I assume this is where we got it.    This illness, unfortunately, was cause for my wife and daughter to cancel a trip to Miami for Grammy’s 90th birthday celebration.  This is where the fun starts!

My wife made a call to American Airlines the day before scheduled departure to alert them that they were ill and it was possibly H1N1,  we needed to cancel the trip for health reasons and we wanted to re-book.  They said that was fine but there is a $150.00 per ticket re-booking fee.  Considering the round-trip tickets were only $170.00 each, this was a tough pill to swallow.  We asked if there was something that could be done and the agent said…  “Well, you could travel anyway and just bring a lot of Kleenex and hand sanitizer.”  My wife hung up the phone and told me the story.  I said, “what?”  She said, “Yep that is what they told me.”  I grabbed the phone and called right back in to American Airlines and started over with a new agent.  We went through the whole thing and I told her that we had all been to the doctor and they advised us not to travel, we are sick and could be putting others at risk, etc…  The agent said, “well you could still fly if you don’t want to be charged the re-booking fee, but you booked on the internetand in the fine print it says that there is a $150.00 per ticket re-booking fee and that any new ticket must be issued to the ticketed traveler.”  I then said did you know that on Southwest Airlines if I need to re-book they simply put the total amount of the tickets in an account for travel funds and I can re-book at any time and apply the funds without any “re-booking” fee?  The agent ignored the comment and again referred me to the fine print about the re-booking fee for tickets purchased on the internet.  I hung up the phone!

After some discussion with my wife about “Sunk Cost” theory (Thanks Grad School and Dr. Debra Aron!) we decided that we would probably just eat the cost of the tickets as it did not make sense to commit to American Airlines for another flight and pay $320.00 plus for tickets we might be able to re-book for as much or less than the $150.00 fee.  We felt good enough to take the risk and let the tickets go unused…

The morning of the flight my wife, still very sick, woke up early and decided to be nice and actually let them know that they would not be on the flight and………  Viola!!!  An agent got the call that actually knows the American Airlines policy.  As she asked about my wife’s story she said, “If you went to the doctor and you have a note and proof (which we did) you can fax it to us and we will not charge you a re-booking fee.”  My wife was very excited to tell me this and let me know right away.  I said that’s great, but why did it take so much stress, work and aggravation to figure this out?  She said, “You should write a post on your site.”  So that leads me to today’s lessons…

1.  Southwest Airlines makes it much easier to do business with them…  Simple process, easy to book, change and cancel travel as well as a great staff at all of their customer touch points.  Compare the 10K’s for each company.  I wonder if this has any impact on results?

2.  American has a broken culture.  The legacy culture of we are the “big boys”  you can choose us or United no longer exists.  I suggest they start engaging their customers and understand how to be useful.  (Maybe they don’t care and only want frequent business travelers that are in the “Admirals Club”.  If so, just tell the marketplace and you will not have so many bad stories floating around and probably not as many customers too!  Air travel is like the Greyhound of yester-year.)  Do a google search if you care… http://bit.ly/AA_Google_Search) 

3.  Every interface to the market is your BRAND!  It is not the AA on the tail.  It is not the TV commercial.  It is every interaction a customer has with AA.  From research on AA.com, to time at the ticket counter and everything that happens in between.  You had better start trying to get your hands around this or profits will remain elusive!  http://bit.ly/2Xtr6O

4.  Don’t make it hard for your customers to do business with you and try to make it easy for them to keep coming back!  Bag Fees, re-booking fees, bad attitude, people not doing their job, competing on legacy assets (flight routes and a 30 year old market position) in a “customer-centric” 21st century.

5.  Bring in some fresh talent to AMR and American Airlines.  Get rid of the legacy employees.  Things are changing and if they don’t they will be permanently grounded!

I will do everything in my power to NOT fly American Airlines in the future.

P.S.  It took over a week of faxing, e-mail back and forth and digging for a phone number on google (American Airlines - Customer Relations does not give you the ability to call them.  WOW!  That is a great idea!  Unbelievable, they must have a lot of unhappy people trying to reach them…) to get this resolved.  It was finally fixed and they have rescheduled their trip.  I’m glad I am not going on this trip!  I’ve had enough Brown Acid for a while…

“Have you ever been experienced?  Well…. I haaaavvvveeee….”

Are You Experienced?

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