All I want for Christmas is United to fly my wife home

Yesterday, Rob Markey published an excellent blog post analyzing the root cause of passenger anger over flight delays and cancellations.

Little did I realize that I would see these same circumstances unfold today as my wife, Sally, tried to fly home on United Airlines. She experienced delay after inexplicable delay that ultimately caused her flight to take off nearly nine hours late. 

Below is a transcript of the text messages she sent me. I think they give a pretty clear picture of what was going on from a passenger's perspective.

9:27 am

- Flt currently 1.2 hours delayed. Weather bad and heavy rain and winds. Here's hoping no more delays, and a safe flight.

10:02 am

- I was wrong. Delay not due to weather (as most flts are), crew rest requirement and captain. And, he's late. Still hasn't arrived, and we were to depart 15 min ago.

- And when he does arrive, he still has to do paperwork. Ah, United.

10:15 am

- Captain finally on his way to plane. He better be sprinting.

10:31 am

- Apparently he wasn't quite as close as they indicated. Still no pilot.

10:49 am

- This is RIDICULOUS. Still.NO.Captain!!

- Saga continues. They are now allowing passengers off plane, and no captain. They are trying to find one for our flight. Will text when I actually leave.

(Me: What?! They actually boarded the plane with no Captain?!)

11:00 am

- Yes, because they were told at 9:20 he was on property and heading to gate.

- Turns out, not our captain.

- Got off plane to grab lunch. Board showing 1145 departure. Lovely.

11:45 am

- Still no pilot.

12:05 pm

- My flt# is UA xxxx. Online now showing 1pm depature

- Sure am glad I woke up @ 5am.

1:02 pm

- Guess what we still don't have. And they have no status update. Lovely day...

1:15 pm

- Oh Captain, my captain!! Progress... I may just land by 5pm!

1:41 pm

- Door closed!! On way home :)

- Door back open. Addressing a 'minor' service issue with fuel.

2:00 pm

- This is INSANE. Turns out fuel pump issue is a recurring problem. Mechanic trying to avoid aircraft change. They have brought a new food truck, switching out breakfast. CRAZINESS.

- No plane change. Finishing up approvals.

- Door closed (again)

- If you don't hear from me again, then we actually took off.

2:24 pm

- I'm back.

- Misunderstanding on the maintenance repair - they are 'crunching #s to see if we can go to CA'.

- So over this.

- !! Door being disarmed.

- Ops Mgrs now involved

- Changing aircraft.

3:02 pm

- Insane. Crew has at least been great - and captain cool. New plane landing at 3pm, we are scheduled to leave @ 4.

- Will keep you posted. Lady just ate it hard in bathroom. Another woman traveling solo w/2 kids, and dog down below. My day could be worse.

- Captain uber cool - he went to check on pup.

- That's replacement captain, not jackass no show captain.

3:38 pm

- Plane here. Crew, captain, co-pilot all on board. Captain asked lots of questions before boarding. Making most of it.

- On plane. Fingers crossed.

4:14 pm

- Passengers on. Luggage on. Door still open - no catering.

(Me: Seriously, remind someone to check TP supply.)

- Laughing with crew - told them story, she ran and checked. Came back to report, 'unless everyone gets sick, we are all good'!

- Their one positive - they recovered my iPad I left charging on first plane (doh!)

- (Continental) crew has been awesome

4:33 pm

- Crew upfront talking about their time limits. They have been at airport since 9am

- One just said, 'oh crap. That will go over well'

- Yup. We were to leave @ 4pm...and then just checked online and it said 435pm

- Still no catering

- Old plane they cycled breakfast and lunch. wonder if we will now get dinner

- I was wondering why they hadn't offered us any beverages. She only has 'dirty dishes'

(Me: Did you ever get a meal voucher?)

- Yes. $5. I didn't stand in line for it - just went and got lunch... 5 hours ago.

4:45 pm

- One of the crew members just said, 'The Mayans are laughing'

- Still no catering. They were to take it from our old plane (at gate 85) to our new plane (at gate 83). Stupid crazy

- Seems they moved old plane before doing so.

- Yet another new departure time: 510. Let's see if we blow that one too.

(Me: New crew required?)

- Not yet. Heard them say they had 1.5 hours max before they got pulled.

5:02 pm

- 5pm - captain came on board explaining we are still waiting on catering. Stated front door open, and passengers are well within their right to leave and request a refund. At this point all we are waiting on is catering. Thanked people for patience.

- Seriously restless natives.

- Lady with dog down below is going NUTs

- 8 hour delay, 6 hour flight.

- YES! Catering truck just arrived.

5:17 pm

- Lady next to me just said, 'I don't think I've ever been on a plane where they announced 2 meals they would be serving, and never served it'. Hysterical. We are taking bets on which meal we will receive.

- catering finishing. They are doing a passenger head count. Everyone better be on this plane.

- Door closed...

5:30 pm

- Agent funny. Just said, 'FA, prepare doors for departure... again'.

- not shutting down until the wheels move.

- You seriously can't make this shit up. Arm stuck on jetway. They are trying to move it back so we can get out of here.

- Moving!

Your employee's viral service failure is your fault

This week’s viral service failure was a waiter who identified a trio of diners as “Fat Girls” and allowed this label to be printed on their bill. The waiter’s identity is unknown, although his first name is Jeff. (Thanks for giving the rest of us Jeffs a bad name, idiot.)

What we do know is the name of the restaurant is Chilly D’s Sports Lounge. We don’t know the name of an employee who typed “lady chinky eyes” on a receipt earlier this year, but we do know they worked for Papa John’s. You might scratch your head at the name Steven Slater, but I bet you’ll remember the JetBlue flight attendant who exited a plane via an emergency evacuation slide after directing a profanity-laced tirade at a passenger.

It's your company, not your employee, that everyone will remember.

It’s not a training issue
When viral service failures occur, the offending employee is typically fired while the remaining employees undergo some type of training. I’m not a gambling man, but if I were, I’d lay down a big bet that it wasn’t a lack of training that caused the problem and no amount of training will prevent it from happening again (more about the training = performance myth). 

How you can prevent it
If training won’t stop your employees from creating the next viral service failure, what will? Here are three things:

#1 Hire right.
Take the time to hire for organizational fit, not just the right skills. Many business invest too little time in the hiring process to get it right, or they pay such low wages that they can’t attract even mediocre talent. If you want to hire right, take the time to identify what makes an employee right for your business (see my handy competency model tool) and consider offering a competitive wage that will allow you to attract more talented, stable employees.

#2 Pay attention to your supervisors
The most influential person for an employee is their direct supervisor. Chances are employees will treat their customers well if their supervisor sets a positive example, meets regularly with them to discuss expectations, and provides regular feedback and coaching to guide performance. Unfortunately, studies show that 50% or more of frontline supervisors receive little or no training on how to lead others. You need to invest in your supervisors and give them training like my Getting Started as a Supervisor program to help them capably lead their team.

#3 Mind your culture
While doing research for my book, Service Failure, I discovered some strange ways that organizational culture can influence employee behavior. In some cases, employees can knowingly do something they know is wrong in an effort to fit in with everyone else. In other cases, employees lack the maturity or experience to truly differentiate between right and wrong and will instinctively follow the examples set by their co-workers and supervisors.

The opposite is also true. Employees will emulate positive examples from their co-workers and supervisors. This leaves business owners with a clear choice: create a positive work climate or risk bad behavior.

Conclusion
Having your business gain national media attention for all the wrong reasons has got to be a nightmare for any business owner. However, in almost every case, these business leaders were asleep long before one of their employees did something on camera.

---

Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It. The book is available in paperbook, e-book, and audio book formats.

You can learn more about the book at www.servicefailurebook.com or purchase a copy online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Books.

Live Experiment: A breakthrough with Whirlpool?

I think I finally have a resolution after contacting Whirlpool 16 times to update an expired credit card. And, I've also confirmed my suspicions that there was a broken link in the chain. As I've written before, your service is only as good as the weakest link in the chain.

Background
My wife and I had a subscription where Whirlpool automatically sends out a new water filter for our refrigerator every six months and bills the credit card they have on file. Our credit card recently expired, but so far we've been unable to give Whirlpool the updated information. (You can follow previous posts here.)

Breakthrough
Yesterday, I exchanged direct messages on Twitter with Chris, a Whirlpool employee who monitors their customer service Twitter feed @WhirlpoolCare. This led to a phone call where I explained that between my wife and I, we had now contacted Whirlpool 16 times in an effort to update an expired credit card. Chris listened, apologized, but like everyone else we had interacted with, he told me he was unable to help me. However, unlike everyone else so far, Chris offered an alternative solution and explained why he was unable to fix my expired credit card (more on the credit card in a moment).

The alternative we agreed upon was that Chris would send us a complimentary water filter as a gesture of goodwill. It would then be up to me to re-establish a new online account with my updated credit card as a workaround to the problem. (I could also find an alternative source for the water filter.)

This is huge because, as I explained to Chris, I have a house full of Whirlpool appliances. Before this incident, I wouldn't consider another brand. Now, I wouldn't consider Whirlpool unless this was resolved. If the filter arrives as promised I'll consider Whirlpool back on my list of preferred appliance brands (their appliances are really, really good).

The Broken Link
Chris also revealed the broken link in their chain. The water filters are fulfilled by a third party, so Whirlpool customer service employees have no access to that company's fulfillment system. The only tool they are given is the instructions on using the website that they can relay to customers. This explains why each customer service representative we've encountered has been unable to help. Apparently, the system's designers never imagined the system could break so there were no contingency plans for handling this sort of situation.

Unanswered Questions
I didn't want to press my luck by asking Chris too many question since I was his last customer of the day and he had stayed a little late to talk to me. My top priority was getting a resolution and I had that now. However, there are a few unanswered questions that could be instructive.

What is the escalation procedure? If a system is broken, someone should be able to escalate. Why couldn't (or wouldn't) Whirlpool's customer service employees escalate this issue to someone who was empowered to fix it?

Where is the process broken? The specific problem was technical, but was it on Whirlpool's end, the fulfillment company's end, or both? When two parties encounter a problem, the instinct is often to point the finger at the other party, which means nothing gets resolved.

What's the full impact? I have to imagine my wife and I aren't the only ones to experience this problem. Is this problem really an iceberg? In other words, how much business is Whirlpool losing due to situations like ours?

---

Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It. The book is available in paperbook, e-book, and audio book formats.

You can learn more about the book at www.servicefailurebook.com or purchase a copy online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Books.

Why the customer isn't always the top priority

Here’s the scene… You are placing your order at a fast food counter when someone suddenly interrupts you to declare a ketchup emergency.

“Can I get some ketchup?” the other customer asks frantically. They physically crowd the counter space, by-passing the line and wedging themselves into the scene to ensure their emergency takes top priority. In almost every case, the cashier stops taking your order and turns to help the other person.

Why does this happen?

There are two reasons. First, the ketchup person is rude. Not rude in a deliberate, “Step aside for the great ketchup king” kind of way, but rude in a “I have a ketchup emergency and I’ll die if I don’t get some ketchup right now” kind of way. They get tunnel vision and they just don’t consider you in their moment of panic.

The second reason has to do with how people pay attention. Without the proper training and awareness, most cashiers will unthinkingly respond to the ketchup emergency before completing your order.

How do we pay attention?

Our brains can focus our attention through two primary ways. One is called top-down and the other is known as bottom-up. Top-down attention involves consciously focusing our mind on a task, conversation, or thought. Bottom-up attention comes from external stimuli such as a loud noise, something visually catching your eye, or something touching you.

In the short run, bottom-up attention will override our concentration if the stimulus is strong enough. This is a human instinct that helps us recognize danger.

Let’s go back to the cashier in our ketchup emergency scene. The customer looking for ketchup captured their attention through bottom-up stimuli by talking in a loud, frantic tone and making themselves seen by physically crowding the space near the cash register. It's human instinct for the cashier to momentarily stop paying attention to you and notice the ketchup person.

It’s the next step that’s the cashier’s choice.

What the cashier does depends on whether or not they have a clear sense of priority. If the current customer is the top priority, then the cashier will utilize top-down attention to politely ask the ketchup person to wait and refocus on taking your order.

If no priority has been established then the cashier will most likely help the ketchup person. Why? Because we tend to follow wherever our bottom-up attention takes us unless we have a deliberate intent to focus on something else. The ketchup person will cause the cashier to instinctively pay attention for an instant, but without a conscious intent to refocus on your order, the cashier’s attention will remain with the ketchup person until the task is complete.

What can we do about it?

The best way to help your employees avoid situations like this is to establish clear customer service priorities.

I recently did a training exercise with a group call center agents where I asked training participants to list their priorities. Universally, they said the person on the phone was the top priority over instant messages, questions from co-workers, or emails. Once they learned about top-down versus bottom-up attention, they decided to limit distractions while they were on a call.

The results of their experiment were overwhelmingly positive. Just by taking the small step of concentrating on the caller as a top priority, they started paying more attention to their customers' needs. This, in turn, helped them identify more opportunities to serve their customers at a higher level.

If you’d like to read more, I’ve written a few other blog posts about how our brain pays attention. Chapter 7 in my book, Service Failure, is also devoted to this topic.

• Why multitasking hurts customer service
• Listening to customers is harder than you think
• Why customer service isn't always obvious

---

Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It. The book is available in paperbook, e-book, and audio book formats.

You can learn more about the book at www.servicefailurebook.com or a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Books.

Live Experiment: Still no resolution from Whirlpool

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged about my efforts to resolve a customer service issue with Whirlpool, so I thought I'd provide a short update.

Background
We have a subscription where Whirlpool automatically sends out a new water filter for our refrigerator every six months and bills the credit card they have on file. Our credit card recently expired, but so far we've been unable to give Whirlpool the updated information. (You can follow previous posts here.)

Update
A customer service representative called me and left a voice message offering to help. We played phone tag for a few days until he stopped calling. One thing I noticed is he said he returned calls in the order they were received and could take up to one business day to respond. The last voice message I left him contained dates and times when I would be available since I wasn't going to be around the following day. This probably threw off his system of returning calls at his convenience, which I imagine is why he didn't call again.

My wife and I have now contacted Whirlpool a total of 13 times in an affort to update our credit card information. It's beyond ridiculous that they can't fix this, but I can guess at the real culprit. If you were to pry open the Whirlpool's customer service and parts fulfillment operation you'd find a hodge-podge of broken systems. Silos between teams, computer systems that don't talk to each other, and pointless policies. It's just a guess, but it's hard to believe my experience is all that unique.

I wish I were David Allen
David Allen is the author of one of my favorite books on personal productivity, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

He also has a bit more social media clout than I do. Check out this Tweet from earlier this week: 

Just let 1.2mil people know that I'm not happy w/Adobe customer service. Curious to see what difference that makes. Social media.

— David Allen (@gtdguy) November 29, 2012

Less than 24 hours later he sent out this Tweet: 

Good on Adobe. They followed up w/me nicely

— David Allen (@gtdguy) November 29, 2012

If you are on Twitter, check out the full conversation that includes replies from some of David Allen's followers. Some of them are spot on. You can also see a few Tweets from Adobe in the mix.