My call from United this morning

As I hinted at earlier, I got a call from United this morning. Usually I never answer calls from numbers that aren’t familiar to me (although I could see the number, it didn’t show as unknown), but for some reason I answered this morning, and I almost had a heart attack when I did. The call started with “This is Mrs. XYZ from United Airlines, this call is being monitored and recorded. May I speak with the person in the household that made a reservation with United yesterday, April 8?” The voice was very cool, so I immediately assumed the worst, although I didn’t know what I had done wrong, and basically started shaking. It’s like getting pulled over by a cop, where despite not being all that scared you shake like a beaver.

I was totally confused so said that it was probably me that had made the reservation, and she says “OK, I’d like to ask you a few questions then.” Oh boy, what did I do wrong, I should have never answered this call?!?! She then proceeds to ask me a series of questions about my satisfaction with the call, clearly reading off a script. I was still quite skeptical, but as it turns out it was just a call to see how pleased I was with my experience.

Most of the questions were in the format of “Thinking ONLY of your call on April 8, how would you rate XYZ on a scale of one to five, one being poor and five being excellent.” I had gotten an excellent agent so almost all of my answers were “five,” and I even inserted a few witty jokes which made the lady laugh, when she was clearly trying to keep a serious tone. A few times she asked me to wait just a second as she typed in my answer. The whole call took a little over five minutes.

Suffice it to say I’m quite confused. On one hand I think it’s great that they’re finding out how customers really feel and doing it on their own initiative instead of some stupid automated survey, but at the same time calling me in an almost intimidating way at their convenience wouldn’t have been my preferred method. Their questions were VERY specific, like whether the agent made me feel like a valued customer, whether the agent appeared to be reading off a script, whether the agent addressed me by name, whether the agent pronounced my name correctly, whether the agent acknowledged my 1K status, whether the agent had put me on hold, whether I experienced any unexpected pauses on the part of the agent, whether the agent presented me with all possible options, whether the agent appeared genuine, whether the agent explained everything thoroughly throughout, whether I had to call more than once, etc.