At the AA annual shareholder meeting yesterday morning, Mr. Arpey said the company is "taking efforts to improve customer service". I think this is a shortsight

At the AA annual shareholder meeting yesterday morning, Mr. Arpey said the company is "taking efforts to improve customer service". I think this is a shortsighted goal. AA should take efforts to improve the whole customer experience. Yes yes yes yes yes. "Customer service" is the backstop to the rest of the customer experience; when a customer has to go to "customer service" to get something done, every other department should see it as their failure. My father recently took a trip on United, and when he was checking in at the airport, the check-in system asked him if he wanted to change his seat. So he did. And after it was too late for him to change back, he discovered that because he had changed into a first-class seat, he was being charged an additional $150. Now, to United's credit, someone at the airport told him who he could email to ask for the charge to be reversed, and when he sent that email he got a prompt response along the lines of "since you did sit in that first-class seat you're not eligible for a refund, but we'll give you your money back anyway". But wouldn't it have been better for everyone concerned if United had designed the workflow on those kiosks so that even a sleep-deprived 70-year-old man in the world's second-busiest airport would not have made that mistake in the first place?