According to leaked internal United documents seen by Skift United flight attendants are having the amount they are paid per credit card application doubled from $50 to $100. It was previously announced that the in flight sales pitches would become mandatory, previously it was optional. I’ve commented before that I don’t think mandatory pitches are a good idea and here’s why:
- Nobody wants to hear a credit card pitch when they are trying to sleep, or are a sleep. I’d love to see the conversion numbers but I bet they are extremely low in this instance and not worth the brand damage you do when you wake customers up or prevent them from sleeping.
- It gives you no flexibility to provide better service. On some flights flight attendants are run off their feet either due to demanding customers or other issues. By forcing them to do a credit card pitch you give them no flexibility in these scenarios. If I’m waiting for something or service has been slow and then I see flight attendants do a credit card pitch my level of empathy is naturally going to lower (although it probably won’t for me personally since I know these are mandatory).
I know that in flight conversions are an extremely good way to acquire new card customers as you’re pitching to people that already use your product. A customer acquisition cost of $100 (this isn’t 100% true as flight attendants still need to be trained for these pitches and marketing materials developed and it looks like it’s $100 per application rather than per approved application) is extremely low as well and that’s whats likely pushing this from United. I still think they would be wise to think of the negative brand damage during certain flights.
