Media Alert: Industry Lesson from United Airlines Backlash; Expert Available, Comments

COLLEGE PARK, Md. 

University of Maryland marketing professor Roland Rust, a global expert on corporate reputation, is available to expand on his point that the fallout from the recent United Airlines passenger incident illustrates the need for companies to strike a "productivity-customer service balance."

Rust, also an international research fellow at Oxford University's Center for Corporate Reputation, teaches a case study at UMD's Smith School of Business, drawn from his own run-in (recounted here) with United Airlines.

The following Rust comments are from this recent post, United and the case for less productivity:

"Their customer service department is a shock absorber," Rust says. "Their job is to keep customers from getting to the top management." As a result, he says, senior leaders at many companies remain insulated. "I'm sure top managers don't spend 10 seconds of their time thinking about customers," Rust says. "They never have access to anybody. All they have access to are the financial numbers and productivity numbers."

"Finding the right balance between productivity and customer satisfaction can be tricky, especially for companies like United that deal with thousands of customers daily. Productivity and satisfaction do have a tradeoff in service," he says. "In manufacturing, not so much.

 "There is an optimal productivity level — a sweet spot. But the optimal productivity level is not set in stone." … As technology advances, for example, the optimal productivity level increases. Companies must also consider market factors such as profit margins, labor costs and the number of competitors operating in the same space.

Rust's above-takes connect with his 2014 MIT Sloan Management Review article, Should Your Business Be Less Productive?

Contact Rust at: rrust@rhsmith.umd.edu  or 301-405-4300.

Additional media contact: Greg Muraski at gmuraski@rhsmith.umd.edu or 301-892-0973.

/PRNewswire-USNewswire -- April 14, 2017/

SOURCE University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business