American Airlines is bringing in expertise from the magic makers at Disney in a bid to improve the passenger experience through a newly created Customer Experience Advisory Board, which will, as the name suggests, advise the airline’s management team on all things hospitality.
The newly formed advisory board was created back in February, but it’s taken until today for the Fort Worth-based carrier to name the first three new members who will provide insights and advice to senior airline leaders.
One of those three members is Carol Campbell, who has worked for the Walt Disney Company for 20 years, most recently as the principal for creating collaboration, overseeing customer relationship management, and theme part design.
Alongside Carol, the advisory board includes Craig Reid, who was most recently President and CEO of the Auberge Resorts Collection. Before his time building the luxury hotel portfolio, Reid spent three decades in various leadership roles at Four Seasons Hotels.
Finally, Lauren Chewning from Marriott Hotels will join the advisory board, bringing her experience in data and intelligence analytics.
The board is spearheaded by Heather Garboden, who has been with American Airlines for some time but was recently named the carrier’s Chief Customer Officer.
Garboden recently revealed how she hopes to transform American Airlines into a premium and customer-focused carrier after losing its way against Delta and United Airlines.
For years, American Airlines has focused on operational reliability and its domestic route network over offering a truly premium experience – something that Garboden admits was a mistake.
“We know that customers expect more, we know that premium has become incredibly important, even in today’s uncertain economic environment, premium demand has remained solid,” Garboden said in an internal podcast last month.
Some of the recent improvements include complimentary Wi-Fi for AAdvantage members, new premium lounges and the introduction of American’s new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner featuring new enclosed Business Class suites.
Still, there’s a lot more to do to improve American’s reputation for poor customer service and a very inconsistent onboard experience. It will be interesting to see what Garboden and her advisory board have up their sleeves in the months ahead.
One of the most important rules of Change Management: Do it faster than you think you can.
Huh. Maybe laying off ALL of Customer Relations, ALL of AAdvantage Customer Service, and ALL of Central Baggage Resolution Office employees all at once last year wasn’t a good idea. Could it be that the customer experience was impacted when the decades of experience and loyalty those employees had was replaced by foreign workers and bots? I wonder how much they are now paying these “experts” to clean up the mess? Not sure how Isom and his cronies still have jobs….
Great, bring in someone from Marriott to help with customer experience. Yeah, how do you think that will work?
A “Disney Experience!” HAH! American Airlines is such a clown show they should make their “experience” adjusted to “Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey”.