United Airlines’ Service-recovery Challenge After Reputation Meltdown

In 2017, United Airlines suffered a blow to its corporate reputation throughout the United States and international markets, including China, mainly due to an incident on United flight 3411, in which an airport enforcement officer forcibly dragged a passenger out of a plane. The inadequate public relations reaction following the incident and ineffective crisis management left the company reeling. The company became subject to scathing social media attacks, customer dissatisfaction, passenger anger, and a drop in its stock value. The airline, which had already been grappling with very low rankings in customer satisfaction indexes, realized the need to rebuild its brand and greatly improve its customer satisfaction ratings. To prevent such instances from occurring in the future, United needed to take steps to rebuild its tarnished brand image and consider some important questions: What service expectations did customers have of airlines such as United? How would these expectations develop over time? How important were customer satisfaction, client relationships, and passenger experience to United? How could an airline company conduct a root cause analysis for service failure? How could it analyze the different gaps in delivering good quality service?

This case is suitable for a marketing or service management course at the MBA level, particularly in sections that deal with customer relationship management, customer experience management, crisis strategies, and service recovery. The case can also be used in a communications course. After completion of this case, students will be able to<ul><li>explain the importance of customer relationship management, customer service, and customer satisfaction in the services sector;</li><li>empathize with customers experiencing poor customer service;</li><li>understand how to avoid a disastrous customer service situation;</li><li>illustrate the importance of contingency planning for services that are prone to problems; and</li><li>understand the importance of service recovery.</li></ul>

• Service Recovery, Customer-relationship management, Customer experience, Customer service