After a Twitter exchange with, and an email from, American Airlines, I still feel like their rebranding, er, modernization, is lipstick on a pig.
I wrote a blog post last week about my thoughts on the American Airlines rebranding, which seemed to merely consist of a paint job, with nothing substantial beneath the surface with regards to the people experience, i.e., employees or customers. When I tweeted my post, I got a response from American. Sorta.
The image below shows the Twitter exchange I had with the Social Media Team at American Airlines. I must say, that team has stepped up its game. (See this interview with the @AmericanAir Team on Skift for more details about how they are handling customer service on social media.) Just a few minutes after I tweeted, they responded to me. Here’s our exchange on Twitter.
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In the last tweet, they asked me to DM my email address so that they could send me more details. I was excited to see if they would lift the hood and tell me something that would make me feel like they got it.
The image below is the email I received. Judge for yourself. It’s a party line document, probably from some internal presentation or memo (notice the “see lower right quadrant” reference after second bullet point – I don’t know what that refers to) that doesn’t really give me anything more than we’ve already seen or heard in the press. So I wrote back, asking for more. I probed for specific details on “people stuff,” i.e., the things I referenced in my post last week. That was 6 days ago; I haven’t received a response yet. I’m not holding my breath.
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Kudos to the @AmericanAir team for being polite, responsive, and doing the best with the information they have. Shame on the executives for not being more transparent with both employees and customers about what really matters: how this impacts the employee and the customer experiences, if it does at all. The fact that they haven’t shared more details (and the fact that it’s not in their bullet points above) tells me that they really believe a fresh coat of paint will fix everything.
Silly me! They actually did focus on their employees. The latest on the rebrand is that the flight attendants will be getting new, designer uniforms. Ah… more lipstick…
By changing nothing, nothing changes. -Tony Robbins
