I’ll admit it. I fly United. I also know that everyone hates them, but I actually don’t. In fact, I’d fly United over any other carrier in the US (which does happen quite often). Ok, so sometimes extreme status helps out, but they do treat their upper tiers of status holders rather well. In the latest round of airline mergers, I was nonetheless please to hear that it was not really a merger of equals. In fact, what happened is that at the end of the day, Continental Airlines bought market share and brand, the United leadership team was generally disbanded, and the continental leadership team brought in to transform what is generally considered a high cost United model. No matter what, I have been treated well at United, but not everyone is. In fact, unless you are a 100k miles flyer and up, your experience on UAL probably sucked. For me, I knew exactly what I was getting when I got on a plane or called my excessive help line. But for the masses, the experience was poor.\u00a0 ((I write this sitting in International First\u00a0 – no doubt in my mind that my experience is vastly different than it is downstairs.))<\/p>\n
As I extended my travels outside the US, I also had a similar experience on United. I knew I could count on upgrades, tell free exclusive help lines no matter where I was in the world. Again, for the masses, this didn’t work out to the same experience. Instead, if you really wanted a good experience, you decided to fly regional carriers. Everyone that is not a frequent business traveller seems to love Southwest, Jet Blue, and Virgin Atlantic, and if you go overseas, god forbid you get stuck in some foreign land using a large US based carrier.<\/p>\n
Part of what I see in HR is that HR service delivery is totally variable depending on who you are and where you sit.\u00a0 OK, I get it that on an airplane, if I pay for a business class seat, I should get a nicer seat and better food.\u00a0 I get that if I\u2019m a seriously frequent flyer, I\u2019m going to get on the plane first.\u00a0 But shouldn\u2019t everyone who calls the help desk get the exact same experience?\u00a0 Is it ever acceptable that someone sits on the phone for 15 minutes to wait for a real person?\u00a0 Back to this idea of variability, there\u2019s a significant problem that how good your service is can depend on what country you are in.\u00a0 It\u2019s not for skills, but for US based countries, the training is just often better and more attentive.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t sit in the HQ country or have a large population, then your employees are relegated to second class status where service is concerned.\u00a0 Often, we have plenty of people from HR Service Centers and HR Coordinators and HR Business Partners in our major population centers.\u00a0 Countries with 20 people get a website and a phone number of someone who is not supposed to talk to them if they are not a director and up.<\/p>\n
If I think about who our callers are, let\u2019s face the facts here as well.\u00a0 If a VP calls your HR center, you are going to get her paycheck fixed within a matter of hours.\u00a0 Some guy from the manufacturing line?\u00a0 Right, manual check will be cut, Fedex\u2019d out and you\u2019ll have a new check in 4 days.\u00a0 We all know the probabilities \u2013 the VP does not really need the money, but the line guy might be living paycheck to paycheck.\u00a0 Our priorities are to address those with status first though.<\/p>\n
Here are a few things you can do to fix the problems:<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I love the fact that someone pretty much always picks up the phone when I call.\u00a0 I love that I only have to listen to 20 seconds of the automated guy, and that they keep upgrading me.\u00a0 I totally get they do this so they can keep my money when I fly.\u00a0 But I\u2019m also quite saddened to hear when others have very poor experiences.\u00a0 If the VP with the paycheck knew what the experience of the line person was, she\u2019d most likely tell you to give everyone equal treatment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tweet 1: Airline miles is not a model for #HR. Services to all, not just the loudest and neediest.\u00a0http:\/\/bit.ly\/12SA5uL<\/p>\n
Tweet 2: Standardizing user experience globally in #HR Service Delivery\u00a0http:\/\/bit.ly\/12SA5uL<\/p>\n
Tweet 3: Your low population countries matter for HR service delivery too.\u00a0http:\/\/bit.ly\/12SA5uL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ll admit it. I fly United. I also know that everyone hates them, but I actually don’t. In fact, I’d fly United over any other carrier in the US (which does happen quite often). Ok, so sometimes extreme status helps…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,10,47,48,8,394,11],"tags":[406,456,408,407],"class_list":["post-2330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communications","category-engagement","category-governance","category-hr-service-delivery","category-strategies","category-hr-strategy-technology","category-service-delivery","tag-global","tag-hr-service-delivery","tag-hrsd","tag-regional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2330"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2454,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions\/2454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}