New American Airlines Customer Experience Advisory Board: Yay?

As anyone who has been following the industry knows, American has been lagging Delta and United when it comes to both customer experience and profitability. Essentially, executives at the airline lacked a vision for far too long. Or perhaps more accurately, they had the wrong vision — they believed that the key to profitability was to just deliver a reliable and robust schedule (not that they were ever particularly good at that).

In recent months, we’ve seen a vibe shift. American appointed Heather Garboden as Chief Customer Officer, and we’ve seen the airline announce it wants to become more premium and customer focused. We’ve started to see some positive changes, and that’s great. As part of this, the airline has just announced the details of a new Customer Experience Advisory Board that it has created.

Is this just marketing, or is there substance to it?

Details of American’s new Customer Experience Advisory Board

American has created a new Customer Experience Advisory Board, described as an evolution of the carrier’s Operational Excellence Advisory Board. The airline has added three experts to this board, bringing more than 90 years of experience in customer insights and hospitality to the airline.

It’s very interesting to see the people the airline has selected, and the companies they’ve worked for. Here are the three additions:

• Craig Reid was most recently CEO of Auberge Resorts Collection, where he grew the luxury portfolio from six to 28 properties; prior to that, he spent three decades in leadership roles at Four Seasons
• Carol Campbell spent more than 20 years at Walt Disney, and is now SVP and Chief Experience Officer at Ascension, where “she led the organization to achieve NPS scores rarely seen in the healthcare industry”
• Lauren Chewning is SVP of Data & Intelligence at Marriott, where she’s focused on “utilizing data and intelligence to drive revenue and customer love for Marriott’s more than 30 hotel brands and other travel products”

Okay, at least two of them come from companies that are known for a great guest experience.