The provision of quality service is one of the major objectives of business entities in the service sector. There are numerous dimensions that contribute to effective service delivery. In this report, we, therefore, examine the five dimensions of quality service in relation to the United Flight 3411 in which four passengers were forcefully ejected from the flight as it was established that their seat was required to enable four crews to fly to Louisville to avert an understaffing crisis. We also examine some of the root causes of the emergent challenges that the company is facing in regards to service quality, using the root-cause fishbone analysis model. The model is instructive in unveiling the primary as well as the secondary caused of the incident.
The five dimensions of service quality include tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Kenyon & Sen, (2015) argues that not all of these dimensions of service quality are of equal importance as there are some that are of more value than others. Yannacopoulos, Manolitzas, Matsatsinis, & Grigoroudis, (2014) note that companies need to point out the service dimensions that are more significant than others so that they can avoid majoring in the minors. As Rotarius, (2013) and Ghorbani, (2014) point out, it is also imperative that companies do not just focus on one of the dimensions as this will negatively affect the other ones.
The first dimension of service quality is tangibility. According to Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, (1988) tangibles include the appearance of the staff, physical facilities and the equipment. The tangibles, in this case, were the boarding seat, which the bone of contention after Dr. Dao refused to un-board voluntarily and thus had to be physically removed from the plane. Essentially, it is the limitation of the physical resources of the flight that brought about the incident. Mok, Spark, & Kadampully, (2013) argues that even though this dimension is normally considered as the least important of them all, it is still a significant component. Verma, (2008) notes that companies strive to ensure that the appearance of their employees is good, including their equipment and their working stations. However, as Kandampully, (2012) notes this dimension fails to hold when reliability and responsiveness are not adequately addressed. The ten-point plan that was developed after the incident sought to address this through stipulating that they will ensure that the crews board the flight about an hour before the departure.
Reliability is the second service of service quality. According to Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, (1988) reliability denotes the ability of the business entity to undertake the promised service accurately and dependable. The passenger boarding the United Flight 3411 expected a comfortable flight that would take them to Louisville, Kentucky in a timely manner. Dr. Dao himself had appointments to catch with his patients the next day, which was a Sunday. Missing the flight, as he eventually did, meant that he had to inconvenience his patients, thereby making United Flight both unreliable and inaccurate in this case. Notably, this is the most important dimension of quality, according to Mohapatra, Ganesh, Punniyamoorthy, & Susmitha, (2018) who argues that customers need to be sure about their service providers; that is highly important to be reliable rather than have sophisticated equipment. In recognition of this service quality, United Flight captures its relevance in the ten-point plan outlines that the airline will not require passengers who have already taken their seats on the plane to give them up involuntarily unless security or safety is at risk. The company also pledged to reduce the amount of overbooking, develop an automated system through which they will solicit for volunteers to change their travel plan and do away with the red tape regarding the loss of bags or luggage.
The third measure of service quality is responsiveness. Davis, (2003) argues that responsiveness is normally indicated by the willing of the company’s staff to help their customer and prompt them to use the service. The United Flight 3411 had to take their crew on board that Saturday because they were needed to discharge their duties on an understaffed flight that would be departing Louisville later on. This meant that they had on-board some four passengers to create space for the crew and the company, therefore, offered a financial incentive to the passengers who had already boarded. The company offered the passengers who would voluntarily agree to give up their seat a compensation package of $ 400 in terms of flight vouchers that were then increased to about $1000. The passengers did not take the offer partly because it was announced after they boarded and settled down for the flight. Therefore, when that approach failed United Flight staff resorted to the Denied Boarding Regulation which allows airlines to deny flights to passengers. The airline did not specify the criteria that used to determine the passenger that was forcefully ejected and in spite of Dr. Dao telling them that he needed to see his patient and couldn’t, therefore, miss the flight, the staff did not take that into account. Therefore, the fact that United Flight was not responsive to the needs and concerns of Dr. Dao and also the other passengers who were bumped off makes the company unresponsive. Chowdhary & Saraswat, (2007) argues that responsiveness is denoted by immediacy, quick response, and promptness to the concerns or queries of the customers. In the ten-point plan, United Flight sought to enhance its responsiveness through establishing a customer solution team to work on the provision of creative solutions for such incidents. The plan for developing the automated system through which customers will be solicited to volunteer changing their travel plan is also geared towards enhancing responsiveness.
The fourth dimension of service quality is assured. According to Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, (1988) this fourth dimension entails the knowledge capacity and the courtesy of the staff and their ability to inspire both confidence and trust in the customers. The case of bumping off the four passengers from the flight cast doubt on the assurance of United Flight services. It meant that in case there emerged a situation where the company’s priorities or needs superseded those of their passengers, then the passenger would have to suffer the consequences. Assurance comes with the service providers understanding their industry and the services that are expected of them. As Saghier, (2015) suggests, assurance is achieved through communicating professionalism or expertise to the customers. Khosrow-Pour, (2018) further notes that the confidence of the customers’ peaks when they can see that the service provider is highly skilled. In the ten-point plan, United Flight sought to improve on their assurance through empowering the employees to resolve such customer service concerns in the moment; developing customer relations solution teams to help in developing creative solutions in such incidents and avoiding to use law enforcement officers to resolve such issues unless some security or safety issues have been identified. The ten-point plan also includes providing agents with additional training every year.
The fifth dimension of service quality is empathy. Rodrigues, (2013) regards this as the caring attitude that is manifested through the individualized attention that a company provides to its customers. United Flight seemed to have focused on the need of their crew to be on the flight above those of their passengers. That none of the passengers accepted the $ 1000 incentive that the company offered implied that they had something urgent or important to accomplish in Louisville, which made them consider that to be a must-flight. But after the Denied Boarding Regulation was adopted and the four passengers were determined, they were not given room to lodge their complaint. This was a failure in empathy on the part of the airline. According to Yarimoglu, (2014) empathy is achieved by making the customers feel that the service providers care about their welfare during the delivery of the service. The quest for enhancing this service dimension is captured in the ten-point plan where United Flight pledges never to remove their passengers from flights unless it is for security reasons. The company also pledged to increase the compensation incentive for the voluntary denial to board up to $10 000 and also do away with the red tape involved in acquiring lost luggage.
After having explored the measures of service quality in the United Flight it is important to examine the causes of the incident. This is important because measuring the service dimensions only focus on the symptoms of the underlying and may not necessarily unravel the causes that need to be addressed. In this case, the root-cause fishbone analysis model is used to examine the company. Giachetti, (2011) regards the root-cause fishbone analysis model as a structured team process that is used to identify the causes or the underlying factors of an adverse incident. Shelly & Rosenblatt, (2011) concurs that this process is critical given that understanding the contributing causes or factors of the failures of a system is required for developing actions for sustaining the corrective measures to be undertaken.
The root-cause fishbone diagram below demonstrates that the cause of the incident was multifaceted. As Preuss, (2013) notes the application of the root-cause fishbone analysis is to enable the team to dig deeper and go beyond the initial reporting of the incident; thereby lending a better understanding of the systems and processes of the organization so that they can be addressed effectively. We, therefore, undertake a closer look at these causes in order to determine the most possible cause(s) that will thereafter inform the recommendations.
For one, the diagram depicts that the incident could have resulted from the sense that the airline lacked a system through which requests for volunteers to reschedule their flights can be made. This would have eliminated the possibility of having the agents seeking such volunteers after all passengers had boarded the plane. The other negative cause of technology was rather secondary in the sense that it spread the news about the incident faster than the management could control the damage on the airline’s image. While these causes are plausible, they do not precisely point to the genesis of the incident
Secondly, the diagram indicates that the staff caused the incident in the sense that they lacked the skills for addressing the incident and they also failed to put the concerns of the passenger into perspective as they made the decision. If the staff was well trained on handling such crises they could have handled it far much better to the extent that would not need to resort to the existing policies. Arguably, this can be regarded as a contributing factor that actually worsened the situation as the staff did not know how best to handle the case after every passenger refused to voluntarily reschedule their flight. their decision to employ the Denied Boarding Regulation further put the incident beyond their control.
Thirdly, the procedure and rules contributed to the incident in the sense that the airline lacked prior proper procedures for scheduling flights, which possibly led to understaffing in Louisville. The procedures would have helped the agents to interpret the situation in the best interest of the customers and the airline. Besides lacking a contingency plan for such occurrence, the airline also did not provide an incentive that would entice or better compensate volunteers. Therefore, the staff at United Flight would have resorted to the contingency plan other than the Denied Boarding Regulation that transferred the matter into hands of the airport police who could not have considered the relationship between the passengers and the airline. This is arguably the genesis of the problem because if these three factors were put in place, the possibility of that incident occurring would be significantly minimized.
Fourthly, the other contributing factor was the policy framework, such as the Denied Boarding Regulation, which provides airlines with the discretion for involuntarily bumping passengers from flights. Notably, in providing airlines with such discretion the policy does not stipulate circumstances where it should be applied; neither does it take into account the welfare of the passenger in terms of the inconvenience they may be suffering as a result of being forced out of a flight. The policy is, therefore, airline-oriented rather than customer-oriented and when applied it is highly likely to injure the welfare of the customers as happened in this particular case. This is largely a secondary cause of the incident, given that its use worsened instead of resolving the situation. Fifthly, communication brought about the incident as manifest in the failure in coordination that led to the understaffing in Louisville. Miscommunication was also evident in the manner in which the information was communicated to the passenger and the lack of the agents to listen to the concerns of the passengers. This is also a contributing primary cause, which could have prevented understaffing and amicably resolved the crisis.
There was the lack of observance of ethical concerns that manifested in the forceful eviction of the passengers and more so inhumanely for Dr. Dao who was dragged out unconsciously. There was a lack of ethical procedures for handling such cases, which the employees could have followed in order to avoid the incident. Therefore, the lack of ethical guidelines for handling the case was a primary cause of the incident.
Lastly, globalization also played a role in causing the incident. This is in the sense that the proliferation of technology has reduced the world into a community of sorts where people can share ideas and information. Possibly, globalization made the incident, not just an American one as wherever the news could reach it must have aroused some considerable measure of human interest. However, globalization cannot be termed as the primary cause of the incident but rather a secondary one in the sense that it worsened the negative publicity that United Flight faced.
The analysis of the causes identified through the root-cause fishbone analysis identified three causes as the primary contributors to the occurrence of the incident. These include the procedures and rules; poor communication and ethical considerations. In response to these identified causes, this report, therefore, makes the following recommendations:
The examination of the five dimensions of the service quality at the United Flight indicated the key service quality areas that brought about the incident that happened on United Flight 3411. More specifically, the inadequacies in terms of all the dimensions of the service quality including tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy brought about the forceful ejection of the four passengers from the flight. We have also established that the incident, promoted the airline’s management to relook into these dimensions of service quality and their resultant ten-point plan was geared towards enhancing each of them.
Secondly, the root-cause fishbone analysis demonstrated that the three major causes of the incident that led to negative publicity for United Flight include unclarified procedures and rules, poor communication channels in the company and the lack of a specified code of ethics for handling customers. Therefore, the above-recommended strategies are, therefore, some of the measures that United Flight could undertake not just to prevent the occurrence of such an incident in the future but ascertain the general quality of their service provision going forward.
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