The pulse of Alexander Interactive

I called US Airways the night before a recent business trip to ask about a travel detail I couldn’t find online. (I’m not name-checking US Airways just to pick on them; it’s part of the story.) Their customer service is obviously outsourced to an overseas location–I had to call twice, and both representatives had trouble speaking clearly and understanding my question.

But this isn’t about offshoring, or customer service reps whose native tongue isn’t English, which doesn’t offend me. (I certainly couldn’t administer tech help in Hindi.) Rather, it’s about training.

Upon completing my second call, the US Airways CS rep said to me, “Can I help you with anything else today?”

“No, that’s it,” I replied.

“Thank you,” she continued, “for calling Use Airways.”

Use Airways. I headed to the airport the next morning still shaking my head about the woman who doesn’t know her employer’s name. Shortly after taking my seat on the plane, a flight attendant got on the PA system.

“All electronic devices must be turned off at this time,” he said. “If you do not turn them off and put them away, we will return to the gate and deplane you, and you will have to rebook on a later flight.” (Emphasis his.)

My seatmates chuckled at his earnestness, but I just thought about my phone call. In the span of a few hours, I encountered two different but striking examples of poor training and comprehension by consumer-facing employees.

My trips on US Airways have largely been pleasant and comfortable. But what is the brand impact of these employees’ mistakes? How many other people notice what I notice, and book their next flight on another carrier?

Airline flight attendants routinely say, “We know you have a choice.” What they–and their management team–need to say is, “We know you notice. And we’re trying our hardest.”

I booked a flight to Austin for SXSW Interactive on Friday. Thanks to delays in planning and confirming my travel, I paid handsomely for the privilege: $674 for well-timed nonstop flights on JetBlue.

It didn’t have to be so pricey. For $419, I could have flown on Continental Airlines instead. But Continental’s booking system so frustrated me that I spent an extra $250 to fly another airline.

Some background: those who know me personally are aware that I don’t much care for Continental. But I’m also not one to splurge needlessly, so when I found out Continental’s EWR-AUS flight was a third cheaper than JetBlue’s JFK-AUS route–at similar times, on bigger planes–I figured I’d give Continental another shot.

I used Continental’s online reservations system to select my flights, then proceeded to the seat selector, which showed each flight at around 85% full. The return flight’s seat map (click to zoom):

The situation was the same each way. The flight had 15 seats available. Continental had declared all of them Premium Seating, even several middle seats, which meant I couldn’t sit in them. But the plane had no other seats available, which meant I’d be booking without a seat assignment.

More background: I’ve traveled enough to know that the guy with no seat assignment is the first to get bumped in case of overbooking. Continental had seats but wasn’t offering them to me. Worse, Continental didn’t have an alternative, just blocked, empty seats.

I understood Continental’s desire to hold good seats for its good customers. I’ve had preferred status on and off in the past and I respect the privileges that come with frequent patronage. But with the rest of coach filled, I couldn’t figure out why Continental wouldn’t give me an empty seat and confirm my travel. Besides, the map confused me: is seat 7B really a top choice of elite frequent fliers?

So I called customer service for help. The friendly Southern woman who took my call confirmed what I was seeing: yes, there are premium seats available; no, you can’t have them. I asked if I could pay extra to reserve those seats: no. I asked if I could get a seat assignment, any seat assignment, so I knew I would make it on the plane: no.

I eventually gave up my attempts to cajole customer service into helping me, and after a few hours of deliberation, I took my business elsewhere.

The user-experience takeaways here are twofold. One is pure information design: don’t share information that’s not actionable. All Continental achieved with the seating chart above was to drive me crazy, showing me that it had seats–some of them rather mediocre seats I’d typically avoid–that I couldn’t reserve. Had they just shown them as unavailable, by having me log in with my (non-elite) OnePass account before selecting seats, I’d have been far less frustrated.

The other, of course, goes to the heart of customer service: sell your goods to shoppers who desire them. Continental lost my business because corporate policy dictates that the booking system has to be ready to accommodate a dozen Elite-status fliers who might want to fly between Newark and Austin on a pair of weekday flights that arrive close to midnight. Why not acknowledge the demand curve and give a paying customer the seat assignment he needs to book his flight?

Even better, why not implement a policy that generates both revenue and customer satisfaction? Many airlines charge for preferred seating. Continental could have levied a $100 fee on me for its premium seats, and I’d probably have paid it, because I’d still have saved money over my JetBlue option.

Instead, I’m back on JetBlue, where I’m willingly overpaying for peace of mind and a guaranteed seat. Oh, and satellite TV in a leather seat with good snacks. Happy jetting.

Ai took its second team business trip by train this week and came away completely satisfied with the experience.

We took the Acela from New York to Washington, D.C., a strikingly fast ride (2:40) compared with driving (4:15) and even Acela’s own New York-Boston line (12 miles shorter yet an hour longer). Our entire trip was downright pleasant.

What makes the Acela so great?

1. Convenience. Train stations in the northeast are located downtown with ample taxi and subway access. (Compare with air travel: no hour-long $40 cab rides out of town.)
2. Hassle. Or, rather, the lack of it: no security checks, no traffic, no boarding by zone. Just a queue to get onto the train, and the odd requirement that we sign our tickets for the conductor. 
3. Comfort. The Acela is roomy: tall ceilings, wide aisles, lots of places to stand and stretch. The snack car is a pleasant walk and is staffed by inviting attendants. We grabbed four-seat work areas with fold-out tables, which allowed us to collaborate, and hang out, as a group. A beverage cart brought us sodas and Entenmann’s cookies (!). The Acela’s seats are on par with most airlines, but with better legroom.
4. Access. For three hours, we had respectable connections to the rest of the world via Verizon and AT&T cell phones. Acelas don’t have wifi yet, but we tethered a laptop to an bluetooth EVDO connection and were able to email and share files comfortably.
5. Time. Going to the airport for a shuttle flight would have taken roughly the same amount of time as our train ride. But instead of spending most of that time in transit–driving to the airport, waiting on security lines, sitting without electronic equipment before takeoff, taxiing to a gate, taking another car into town–our three hours were spent comfortably, in a single seat, with laptops and phones fully operational.

Which is not to say rail travel is perfect. The Acela is far from its high-speed potential, and suffers from Amtrak’s notorious reliability problems: on our Boston trip our train completely died in Rhode Island, then began running smoothly 15 minutes later. But at least there we were on the ground, looking at foliage, enjoying our comfy cabin.

Our trip was a success, and so was the commute. Here’s to hoping President Obama’s high-speed rail concept actually goes somewhere.