Full Video: United Airlines Chief Customer Officer at Skift Aviation Forum 2022

25.08.2023 - 14:35 / skift.com / Linda Jojo / United Airlines / Justin Dawes / Brian Sumers / Airlines

Linda Jojo, chief customer officer for United Airlines, described a slew of ways the major airline is changing the customer experience during the Skift Aviation Forum in Dallas. 

A major piece of that is digitizing service throughout the whole customer experience, including current experiments with biometrics. The airline is taking innovation ideas generated from within the board room as well as outside of it, and monitoring how well those ideas go over with customers. 

“It’s really about giving customers choice, and increasingly people want to use digital to get through airports,” Jojo said during the on-stage interview. “We’re doing a lot of innovation at our gates right now with technology, and we’re watching how people are using it.” 

Another big topic during the discussion was airline food: why it’s not been great, how it’s getting better, and how customers now have more options. 

Watch her full on-stage interview with Skift editor-at-large Brian Sumers, or read the transcript below. 

Brian Sumers: Hi, Linda.

Linda Jojo of United Airlines: Hey, Brian.

Sumers: Thanks for doing this.

Jojo: Great to be here.

Sumers: I always give Linda a hard time because she is the chief customer officer at United, and I am the chief customer.

Jojo: All of our customers are chief customers.

Sumers: Well, you remind me every time I sign in to the app that I have been a Mileage Plus member since 1985.

Jojo: That’s impressive. How old were you?

Sumers: I was three years old.

Jojo: Yeah.

Sumers: It is neat, a lot of the things that you’ve been doing along those lines. If you get on the airplane, flight attendant might thank you for being a Mileage Plus member, might wish you happy birthday. Tell me about this touchpoint. I’m not the only customer that’s getting this. Why is this so important to you guys at United?

Jojo: That’s a great example of how we’re thinking about the customer experience. It starts with great people, which is our flight attendants. It goes to a great product; that’s the products that our customers see, it’s also the products our employees use; and it’s the technology. In this case, this is an app called My Flight. We’ve had it out for about six years at this point, and what My Flight does is provides all the data about all the customers that are on the plane that our flight attendants are actually working, and a lot of nuggets about that. Yes, if it’s your birthday, the day before or the day after, we know that. Not the year, year’s not on there, just the day. If you’re an accelerating customer, but also how your last five flights went with United, just a little stoplight — red, yellow, green — of how they went. Then we let our flight attendants do what they do best, is use that information and