United Airlines’ investment in customer experience, from a revamped mobile app to better on-time departure, is paying off.
The airline touted its best ever fourth quarter CSAT score in an earnings report Monday. In an earnings call Tuesday, United President Brett Hart lauded the company’s NPS scores, too.
“Thanksgiving and the entire fourth quarter had the highest NPS scores in our post-pandemic history,” Hart said.
Passengers who were extremely likely to recommend the airline to family and friends increased 4% in 2023 compared to the previous year, the company said.
The improvements in customer sentiment come from prolonged investment, Zach Griff, senior reporter at The Points Guy, told CX Dive.
“Since the pandemic, United has invested perhaps more than any other major U.S. airline in the customer experience,” Griff said in an email.
“It can take a while for some of these long-term updates, such as fleet-wide retrofits, to start showing results in NPS and CSAT scores,” Griff said. “This isn’t an overnight process, but anecdotally, we’ve been hearing reports from many readers sharing much more positive experiences with United than before these investments.”
Griff pointed to United’s United Next plan, first unveiled in 2021 and updated in 2023, to upgrade “nearly the entire domestic fleet with new seats, seatback entertainment screens with Bluetooth capabilities, larger overhead bins and faster Wi-Fi.”
Beyond the cabin experience, United leaned on its digital tools to improve passengers’ experience. The airline revamped its mobile app in 2023 with dozens of enhancements and new features.
Among those features is Live Activities for iPhone. Customers used the feature — which provides customers real-time access to their flight information and a countdown clock to departure time — in more than 65 million sessions in 2023, according to United.
The mobile app also saw widespread usage with two-thirds of customers using it to manage their day-of travel.
Meanwhile, United’s Connection Saver tool, first unveiled in 2019, lets the airline know when a passenger might miss a connection so it can potentially hold the connecting flight. The tool helped 713,000 passengers make their connecting flights in 2023, according to the earnings report.
These tools, Griff said, have “made flying with the carrier more enjoyable.”
“As more travelers seek self-service travel options, a good mobile app is the key to delivering on that expectation,” Griff said. “United’s app is already the best of all the U.S. airlines, and it’s been getting even more useful with new Live Activities, detailed flight status with explanations for delays and cancellations and a revamped rebooking center during irregular operations.”
In fact, Business Traveler USA ranked United’s app the best airline app, and United says it's the most downloaded airline app.
Of course, one of the most influential aspects to passengers' experience is reliable operations, specifically on-time departure. United performed well there, too, though it’s now navigating how much the grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 9 jets will affect operations in the first quarter this year.
“We closed out the year with strong record breaking operational results, carrying a record 171 million customers,” Hart said on the earnings call.
The rate for on-time or early arrivals and for misconnects “were the best for any quarter in our history,” Hart said. “Not only did we set company records for the quarter but we also ran record setting operations during our busiest time of the year over Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
