I'm among 200 or so passengers on a Saturday morning, waiting to board a Continental flight from Barcelona to Newark. The boarding is 30 minutes delayed and no explanation has been offered. Nine employees of the airline are joking around with one another, apparently disinterested in what customers are feeling, although there is clearly a concerned buzz making its way through the crowd about whether the plane has a problem. In fact, the Continental employees have their backs to the crowd. None have bothered to say hello, to thank customers for their business, or reassure them that the plane is OK.
I'm a frequent traveler - a long time "platinum" with millions of miles on multiple airlines - and the behavior of these Continental employees is an all too familiar site at many airlines in airports around the world.
When did the airlines forget that passengers are customers? Where is management? Where is HR?
It's not that customer service is foreign to the airline industry. Virgin Atlantic does an excellent job in my experience. So does Singapore Airlines. Southwest and JetBlue are normally good.
So, here's a radical suggestion for HR leaders and professionals at Continental and other airlines. Envision a role for HR that is broader than union relations, pay and benefits. At RBL Group, we think of HR as accountable for "converting customer expectations into employee actions." In other words, HR has an important role to play in shaping the customer experience by determining the skills and attitudes of the people the company hires, how employees are trained and rewarded,, who is promoted into management, and how employees are kept informed.
To the HR leaders at Continental and other airlines, here are a few specific actions you might take:
Be a customer. I mean a real customer, not a Continental employee that periodically flies for free. My advice is that airline management ensure that every employee buy a ticket, stand in line, deal with long delays on the phone, and struggle as the rest of us do when the flight is delayed or cancelled. In short, put your Continental employee card away and experience what it's like to be one of us.
Talk to customers, and learn how they describe their experience. Call the top 10 percent of frequent fliers - the customers most familiar with your service and customer experience and probably that of your competitors. When was the last time airline HR leaders spent serious time on the customer care phone lines? Intuit built a dominant customer franchise by ensuring that all employees had direct experience with customers. Some questions you might ask:
•Do our employees have the skills needed to give you a satisfactory experience?
•Do our employees act like they value you as a customer?
•How can our employees improve how we treat you as a customer - while you're waiting to board the plane, for example?
•On the TV monitor, our CEO Larry Kelner says that our employees work hard to earn your business. For what percentage of Continental employees do you think that's so?
•Do other employees of other airlines do a better job? If so, which airlines? What can we learn from them? What do they do better?
Work the counter. HR's stock and credibility will rise precipitously when they have direct customer experience. When was the last time HR leaders worked the counter, saw the problems first hand, and dealt personally with customer concerns? How much might that change what HR sees as the priorities and the solutions?
Mind the gap. Up close and personal knowledge is the first step in building a customer centered HR department, but keep going. The London subway system reminds passengers to "mind the gap" between the train and platform to avoid accidents. HR at Continental and other airlines can do the same for employees by sharing what they've learned and helping managers and employees to mind the service gap. Observe how employees deal with customers and then provide that feedback in training sessions. Help employees understand what customers are feeling about the quality of service, identify areas where real difference in perception exists, and where improvement is needed. HR becomes strategic when it takes initiative in helping employees and managers to see the impact of their behavior on customers.
Manage HR professional time, priorities, and investments with the customer in mind. Look at your diaries. How much of your time is spent understanding the customer experience and focusing HR time and expertise on creating a better and stronger bond between employees and customers? The customer ought to be infused in everything HR does. In our workshops with HR leaders and professionals, we consistently find that the HR teams of great companies see themselves as an integral and important part of the customer value proposition, not administrators, and express this in how they spend their day and dollars.
Continental, like other airlines, does a lot of things right. But they can do much better and HR needs to play a critical role. What's your experience?
Jon Younger is a Partner of The RBL Group, a firm providing consulting and executive education in strategic HR and leadership. Jon leads the Strategic HR practice area, teaches in many executive education programs and is a Director of the RBL Institute. He is co-author, with Dave Ulrich and three other principals at The RBL Group, of "HR Competencies" (SHRM, 2007), "HR Transformation" (McGraw-Hill, July 2009) and many articles, and last year logged client work in 35 countries.