Communication is Essential for Online Success

Yesterday was likely my most frustrating flying experience I’ve endured since I began flying 25 years ago at the age of 10. While I may never know the true reasons how this day began, I realized last night while it was over I gained something of great value, a lesson. While we all make the same face on the shitter, businesses mess up all the time but with proper communication, challenges and adversity can be overcome. Did United Airlines screw up very bad yesterday or are they just a company no different than you and I, and ultimately overcame a typical challenge in business? Well, I don’t have my answer quite yet, I’ll have to ponder on that one further, but maybe you’ll gain some insight into this like I did. Fortunately I endured 15 hours of hell and it turned on a dime on the 15^th hour, ending my day with reflecting into a massive lesson.

Some United Employees could care less about a single passenger

My flight was departing from DFW at 9:44pm from gate E5. Here’s a picture of the scene as I walked up to the gate, a very typical scene before boarding a place. I didn’t pay attention to the frenzy of people at the ticketing counter, which now as I reflect back, was my first sign that today was just going to be that day. I enjoyed downloading my boarding pass on my smart phone, and used a QR code and my IL driver’s license to pass security. The one obscurity of this scene at the boarding gate that most of us didn’t notice at first, there are no United agents at the gate.

It wasn’t long after 9:44 that I realized I was sitting there with the tension and the energy high, everyone was fidgeting and no one was talking. There’s something strange going on here, and I needed to do something different. I asked the first person I saw, are you going to Chicago? Immediately he experienced a sense of relief but quickly expelled some of his frustration, I heard it in his tone, with his reply, “Yes, but the flight seems to have vanished”.

In my peripheral vision I saw several of the other passengers piquing interest in our conversation. So I spoke louder and asked another passenger, “are you to Chicago?” Well, you guessed it, their reply was the same. So I spoke louder, “Is everyone here going to Chicago?” I just rose a sleeping giant, an army of a 100 or so frustrated passengers in an airport under my leadership. I realized it was time to rally the troops and take charge. The mystery of the vanished United agents at DFW E5 for a 9:44 departing flight was sought to be solved, and an answer to why a major corporation took $300 from several hundred of us and aren’t delivering on their promise, to fly us from Dallas to Chicago with a noon arrival time. I just wanted to get home to my kids, my son was asking his mom every 30 minutes when is daddy coming home, and I had feel the pain of missing him as I read her text messages.

There was a plane, a couple of United workers on the tarmac not really doing anything and a boarding gate full of travelers, but not a single United employee. I soon realized and later learned the scramble of people outside security we’re the smarter or less oblivious travelers rebooking their flights. Those of us on the inside had no reason to think otherwise prior to departure, everything seemed normal. At that time, I saw a fast paced United employee speed walking, almost jogging, past our gate. DFW is not a United hub, so there was only a small handful of United gates and this was the only United flight departing at this time, to my knowledge. I darted over and asked him if I could ask him a question. I felt as if he raised his hand at me and he spoke “I can’t right now, I’m very busy”. The other passengers witnessed this situation, and the tension of my army rose.

A phone call on the courtesy phone failed, on both of them. The computer offered me a chance to rebook my flight on a 5pm flight.

Fear is extremely strong driver in our lives, but the results are can be extreme based on your choices

After some quick conversation with the passengers and learned one gentleman may miss a family member’s funeral, another is connecting on a transferring flight to Italy, bringing her brother’s bride to be custom made wedding dress and several who simply we’re going to miss their time with loved ones, I felt an immense collection of love in this room and realized this company was fucking with the most important aspect of people’s lives, love. This wasn’t a situation of what I later learned was mechanical failure, but a situation that a company was scared to deal with its customers, because they know they messed up. Fear is extremely strong driver in our lives, but the results are can be extreme based on your choices. It became clear United is experiencing some challenges today, and their front line retreated to safer grounds. The small United team at DFW responsible for leading their customer onto the plane, were hiding in their quarters to move those ready to board the plane back out of security into the pool of sheep at the ticketing gate. None of use wanted to deal with this, we just wanted the company that we gave our hard earned money to during a personal transaction, to continue the personal touch and provide us with a viable solution to return to our loved ones. It’s not much to ask as a customer, is it?

Google is making businesses better businesses and our lives easier

I quickly Googled [united customer service number] and knew to jump past the first listings of United sites and go to ContactHelp.com. This was the #2 spot on my Google smartphone. The first page has a clickable phone number and small excerpt that said “Speak “Operator” at each prompt. This took me 3 times until their system gave up and transferred me to a live customer service rep”. I hit one button, send, turned on my speaker phone and waited to hear the ‘operator’ prompt. It never came, only four prompts that would lead me into a frenzy of playing the automated telephone game, which I hate. I took the website’s advice, and spoke ‘operator’. Another similar yet slightly different prompt. I spoke ‘operator’. A third different prompt came on, but again no options for an agent. I spoke ‘operator’ for the third time and sure enough, I was on hold for two minutes for a live operator. Google was there to make my life better and easier, again. What a user experience!

While the man on the line was empathetic, when asked for a confirmation number, my initial reaction was to grab the boarding pass of my new friend and general next to me. It was too long to fumble on my smartphone to navigate to my own confirmation number. We confirmed his ticket and the agent proceeded to let us know that the flight is delayed until 5pm due to mechanical failure. He then told us to see a ticketing agent if we wanted to rebook all of our flights or wait for the flight 7 hours. I wasn’t accepting this. I told him that we have all done our part in our agreement and we’d like to speak an agent at the boarding gate to rebook our flight. I responded with some arrogance fueled by frustration, that I have a picture of the scene at his gate and that I’m in the business of Internet Marketing. I’m going to share this picture and story with my followers, to make ourselves heard to more than 150 of your customers locked inside a sardine can. He told me, while he didn’t realize I was on speaker phone and had 10 strangers huddled in a circle around me, he could rebook my flight over the phone, but he couldn’t help anyone else. This erupted my audience on my stage, with comments of frustration “he’s in india”. I proceeded to rebook my flight with him, where he had to transfer me to another airline to fly me to another state, connect terminals in under 30 minutes and fly to Chicago arriving home around 6:30 pm. It was a decent option so I proceeded. To this gentleman’s credit, he was very empathetic to our situation and just did his job with the limited power and control he was provided.

I had some time before my departing flight so I decided I should proceed with making some noise to United electronically, my problem was solved but there was still 99 other people with no solution and a lot of pain from missed love. I had the tools to try and do something, reflecting on my experiences of major corporations responding to angry tweets and solving the problem such as @Comcast. They understand the power on online social media. We find out later, @United doesn’t.

Is United using Twitter to promote themselves or as a communication channel?

Here’s my tweets. Our frustrated audience grew, frankly United could respond and say there was 50 people at the gate. I really don’t know, but my judgment grew or perhaps the group grew! I have yet to receive a response or mention from @United.

I decided I could write a blog post, I just need to get hooked up with Internet. Since I left my charger in my hotel room, I needed power for my wireless card, since the wifi seemed to not work in that area of the terminal. It worked, but was slower than Internet. Hmmmm, maybe someone throttled the Internet to limit access? I doubt it, but it’s not completely ruled out. I begun a mad dash to go find a charger in the airport. While jogging, I found a United employee.

Our conversation lasted about two minutes, I wanted to end it once I realized I’d be spinning my tires with her and no solution would come from it. It was her, an older short haired skinny lady who really didn’t give a shit about passengers, she worked at United for a paycheck. After my initial question and dialogue, she was on a rant of how a passenger who is missing their cruise line should have never, ever booked a flight so close to departure. She essentially minimized our problem, didn’t take accountability for their actions and in turned blamed the people who are responsible for her paycheck, her only objective for wearing her silly uniform. She should not be working for United. I realized any further conversation with her wouldn’t lead me closer to my goal, so I quickly ended it and proceeded to buy my charger.

After fumbling with my wireless card that wasn’t connecting to Verizon, I decided to send another tweet, this time ensuring I’m addressing @united. I knew I had to leave and I wasn’t doing a good job for my new friends, without Internet on my computer I simply couldn’t execute anything that quickly. I knew my only tool was my smartphone and I hoped my tweet could be read. It was a longshot, but I hoped United was smart enough like @Comcast. After some small talk with the organizer of Stompernet who was experiencing other delays for her United flight to Atlanta, I had to bolt off to find US Airways gate to board my plane and get my boarding pass. I only hoped the agent did his job.

US Airways Rocks!

Upon arriving at the gate for my US Airways flight, the ticketing agent could not believe my story. Just as she was about to process is, she responded to me and said ‘Sir, if you’d like I can get you a great seat if you wait for 4 minutes, the computer won’t let process the upgrade for 4 minutes”. I was having a bad day and she knew it, I’m not sure if she saw an opportunity to win a new customer, but she listened to me and took action. She can keep her job. Does US Airways rock better than United? No, I just met a nice employee who cared.

I sat beside a deadhead. A pilot who flies the same plane, an Airbus A321 I believe. He couldn’t believe my story of the vanishing crew. It didn’t matter, it was behind me and I was set to go home to see my son. We quickly moved on his passion, and something I’m very excited to explore at a later time in my life, being a pilot. He taught me a lot about the planes and answered some questions I had.

When I landed in Charlotte SC, I quickly changed terminals for a mad dash to my gate. TSA instructed me I had to exit security to get my boarding pass. I guess I can’t fault them for knowing the airlines’ procedures that I can get my boarding pass at the gate. The line was small and I put my credit card in to retrieve my boarding pass. I was not assigned a seat on this United flight to Chicago. I thought this was odd.

At the gate, I witnessed chaos. The line at the ticketing agent was 15 people deep. After some time and others were boarding the plane, I was one person away from sharing my experience and hoping to get on this highly overbooked plane. No one was stepping up to revoke their ticket, they wanted to see their loved ones and likely were experiencing frustrations from United like I was. We all make the same face on this shitter, but the sheep mentality kept us from being an organized forced to make a difference. This is just the way flying is I guess. Then the agent spoke, “Anyone without a seat assignment please wait, we need volunteers then I can assign you a seat”. If it wasn’t for bright passenger who told me she noticed there were half a dozen upgraded seats available in the AM on the flight, I’d have no hope of getting on this late flight.

Because of this day, I never took time to eat. I was famished. I only hoped I would get on the plane and buy some overpriced, decent boxed food on this 90 minute flight. I was dehydrated, my own fault for not grabbing a bottle of water sometime during the day. I did have a ginger ale on the previous flight. Then my name was announced, I got a seat. I was the second name and the first to get my pass, in this group of 20 or so unassigned frustrated tired flyers. I could tell, they all shared similar stories, but came from different areas of the country than me.

I bolted on the plane, bypassing the zone call. I sat down in my upgraded seat and asked a flight attendant for some water. I drank the glasses of water like I was taking a shot of jagermeister. In my seat, I sat beside a Caucasian shoe maker who lives and has a business in China and an attorney from Chicago. We had some interesting deep conversations on the flight.

This flight was horrible, but I was in high spirits. United Airlines serves no food on flights less than 90 minutes. A Korean stewardess reached into her pocket and gave me a tiny, half melted toberone chocolate bar. United should sell food, or prepared in a situation like this. 90 minutes on the tarmac is surely enough time to eat it, or have enough time to put it away if we depart. It was a little bit of energy!

The 90 minute flight turned into almost 5 hours in the sardine can. We sat on the tarmac for over 90 minutes because United wanted to push the plane from the gate, to move more passengers, while Chicago had stopped all flights due to severe storms. It turned out that I’d rather be uncomfortable in that plane with strangers hungry because our pilot communicated everything it seemed he knew of the situation. He was overly informative. He told us the truth. I heard the breakdown in his control as a pilot to get us in the air. He knew, as I did because of my Google weather software, that if we took off now we’d miss the storm and able to land before another major storm was approaching. Our window to take off was closing, and fast.

We got our clearance after 90 minutes. We were told the runway was backed up, but the pilot is trying to get us ahead. He never told us if we would, but we took a different turn and noticed half a dozen planes ahead of us as the jet started to fire up. We were taking off, only 90 minutes late.

Upon approaching Chicago, the captain informed us due to the storms, there were major delays at the world’s second busiest airport and United’s hub. We were in a holding pattern, for what sounded like 40 minutes. Every so often, we’d get an update. The time kept changing but our pilot was still demonstrating the lack of coordination at United and hassle their employees must be dealing with at ORD. It was all OK, we all seemed peaceful on the plane, the energy was calm and the passenger around me were all acting much different than my friends in the morning. We all make the same face on the shitter, but this time our environment was different. We had a very understanding pilot who had a massive passion of his career. He understood what it’s like to be a passenger and I later learned that he tries hard to disclose as much as he can, because he gets frustrated when he’s a deadhead in the back. How cool is that? Isn’t that just awesome! He managed to calm his entire plane who were all starving after being on a plane for 5 hours with no food and we had no solution in place.

Can you seen the 360 happening here? All he did was communicate with us. He, as an employee of United, recognized a problem, understood the frustrations of his passengers, reacted to communicate his understanding of the situation, expressed the actions he’s taking in his control and in turn, reversed a situation that could have similar implications to his business as the experience I had in the morning.

This time in my eyes, United Airlines, communicated with me. My perceptions was United failed that morning.

The truth is my perceptions, along with thousands of others, are the actions of each employee are perceived as actions of entire multimillion dollar company. The company creates the systems and processes, but it’s the employees who build the business.

I didn’t get home until 11pm after a flying day that started at the airport before 9am. I bet I could have driven fast from Dallas, perhaps that where some of my passion for being in control on the road over flying comes from. Nonetheless, I needed to share my feelings with this pilot. My mission is help people in life and I saw an opportunity to help tens of thousands of people. All I needed to do was to give this pilot a moment. I pulled him aside and just told him this.

“Today is likely going to be the most frustrating flying experience of my life and I fly a lot, but I’ll remember it for the rest of my life because of you. You told us everything, and I know you’re limited in your ability to control anything at United, but you cared and I just want to really thank you for caring about your passenger’s well beings. Today I’m walking off this plane as a United passengers and will continue to be a United passenger. I’m just one person you saved today and thank you for communicating with us”

This grown man, who seemed to be in his twenties, had a tear in his eyes. I kid you not. This man was fighting something. As he spoke in a vulnerable, weak voice, he shared with me his experiences of being a deadhead. I got it right there and then.

We all make the same face on the shitter, his business had problems, but it’s their people that make it. He had passion to continue to take my money and deliver a value added service. I bet he saved 100 passengers that day.

I hope that United builds the proper channels of communication and implement different channels of control for their employees. The flying experience doesn’t have to be so frustrating; us passengers know it’s difficult to manages these planes against mother nature and mechanical failure. We just want to know details. Without details, we get pissed off. You just need to communicate and overcome of your fear of angry customers. Sure, we all have our own ways to express ourselves, but that’s just it. We just want to express ourselves, and be heard.

It’ll be interesting if United responds to me or not. It doesn’t matter, I know others will follow Jet Blue’s lead. There’s gotta be a good reason why they are growing so fast and United isn’t.

All I know is that I’ll be communicating with my audience online and offline and will never hide.