The Ultimate Perk: A Human on the Line
If the CLEAR story highlights the collapse of customer service, the airlines reveal the opposite lesson. Consider the experience of travelers who hold the highest levels of flight status.
Earning these tiers is brutal. United’s coveted 1K status, for example, must be re-earned every year—no rollover, no carryover; everyone starts at zero on January 1. In earlier years, the main draw was complimentary upgrades. But in 2025, upgrades are scarce. Flights are packed to the brim, and most premium seats are bought outright by frequent fliers who want legroom, real food, and—ironically—a better shot at requalifying for status.
So why do customers still chase it? Some even take “mileage runs,” booking unnecessary flights just to hit the threshold.
A simple informal survey of veteran travelers points to a surprising answer. Top status allows customers to bypass the always stressful lines at check-in and boarding—but that perk is no longer the real prize.
The true value lies in the dedicated customer service line, staffed by knowledgeable and empowered representatives who can actually solve problems. For elite travelers, that access is priceless. In 2025, nothing feels more luxurious—or more rare—than competent human interaction that resolves an issue on the first call.
The Illusion of Service
The situation is all too familiar: It’s like a restaurant that fills every table, hires plenty of servers, but forgets to build a kitchen big enough to handle the load. The front-of-house looks great; the back-of-house collapses. CLEAR made the same mistake. It poured money into technology to cut headcount, but instead of reinvesting the savings into real support, the company left the system underpowered. Five-to-seven-day response times aren’t customer service—they’re neglect.
And this article could easily focus on any industry. Premium package delivery companies are another case study in the customer service collapse—now made worse by clumsy AI layers hiding unreachable human agents. Who would have imagined a decade ago that the U.S. Postal Service would come to look like the better option than FedEx or UPS? Yet today, many customers are exasperated enough to say exactly that.
Bad AI Is Worse Than No AI
The goal of customer-service AI should be simple: improve the customer experience.
Too many rollouts fail because they chase cost savings instead of customer satisfaction. A recent MIT study found that 95% of AI projects collapse. Why? Because they forget the first principle of technology: It must solve problems for people, not create new ones.
Companies that get AI right will use it to empower customers, not frustrate them. Those that don’t will quickly learn the hard truth: Bad AI is worse than no AI at all.
Ironically, the clearest lesson comes from an industry famous for its own history of failures: the airlines. After 40 years of turbulence, American carriers have figured out how to deliver at least one thing consistently—top-tier service lines staffed by humans who can actually fix problems. On that front, they still earn their wings every day.