Carl Howe, of Blackfriar’s Communication, posted the following(courtesy of SeekingAlpha), noting that:
The difference between bad and good companies is how employees are empowered and respond to problems. Southwest Airlines (LUV) empowers its employees to break rules so long as they are doing right by their customers, and it has been the most profitable airline for years now. JetBlue, on the other hand, appears stuck trying to maintain its low-cost, low-frills origins, and is rapidly paying the price for its unwillingness to do right by its customers. And until it starts acting instead of apologizing for this crisis, it’s going to have a lot fewer of those customers for quite a while to come.
Carl outlines five steps to improve the problem, as passenges should not have to buy the local newspaper to know that Jetblue is ‘feeling their pain’. Of course, we read the newspapers, but we agree the Jetblue website had a lack of material during the crisis period.
- Publish an apology online along with directions on what customers should do. Pretending operations are anything like normal at this point is pointless.
- Deliver stranded JetBlue customers to their destinations. At this point, JetBlue’s competitors are running normal operations. If JetBlue can’t fly them to their destinations, they should rebook their stranded customers with companies who are flying. Not tomorrow — today.
- Send every inconvenienced customer something that proves JetBlue is sorry. This can be something as simple as a voucher for a free flight to get them to try the airline again. JetBlue got nothing to lose here, since few customers affected are likely to fly JetBlue again without it.
- Invest in JetBlue’s people and systems to do the right thing by customers, even when conditions are bad. This crisis has proven the company needs better operations, more rapid communication, and smarter decisions when operational problems arise. While Neeleman’s promise cited in the article to fix operations is great, it will take money to make it happen. Spend that money now.
- Document all these efforts on the Web site — and keep it updated as changes occur. Like it or not, JetBlue isn’t going to be able to hide its flaws from customers for a long time to come. Rather than fight the publicity, JetBlue might as well embrace it and make it work to its benefit.
With the exception of Southwest, we can’t think of an airline that empowers its employees…in fact we can think of few companies that do. Empowerment costs money. For management, he suggests one idea for an airline to try we are in favor of. We’ve heard of some airline executives actually doing this, and hope to see more.
So if corporate executives aren’t the proxies for the everyday flying public that they used to be, what can the airlines do? Well, they can start by eating their own dog food. Assign executives to fly the line routinely, arm them with free drink coupons and trip vouchers, and have them firefight issues they see. When they share the service experience with their customers, they’ll have a lot of suggestions on how to do better. And if airlines were to honestly document and publicize those experiences, they could create good publicity and marketing buzz far beyond anything they could buy.
Of course, if we spotted a Jetblue executive, we’d probably talk his or her ear off through the entire flight…which may be a reason for them to avoid making themselves known on planes. Jetblue appears to be making an effort to change. And it is their response that will dictate their future.