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Honesty is the Best Policy
The messy delays at JetBlue last week has made the airline the center of the media spotlight, and the negative experience has put the company's customers at risk. But sometimes making good on a mistake can have greater value in the long term.
Last week’s events may have broken customer trust at JetBlue, but I believe Founder and CEO David Neeleman already put the mechanisms in place to repair the damage. Through the company’s openness, honesty, frequent communications, and confidence, JetBlue may be able to restore trust by immediately fixing its problems.
Neeleman took the pilot’s seat and responded quickly with sincere atonement. He posted a video apology on the company’s Web site and yesterday the company released a Customer Bill of Rights which promised varying amounts of vouchers for different degrees of flight delays (even though the bill still allows passengers to wait on a tarmac during ground delays for up to five hours).
Customers respect honesty. Not only has Neeleman been candid about the reason for the airline’s extremely delayed flights last week, he was clear about how the airline would follow up to make the situation right with customers. Customers were unfairly treated and as a result they feel vulnerable. As Neeleman states in his apology letter “Nothing is more important than regaining your trust....”
I think customers will come to respect JetBlue’s straightforward approach and last week's chaos will soon be a faint memory.
Being a contrarian, this incident has actually given me a more positive outlook on JetBlue! .
I am a late adopter …took my first JBLU flight in May ’06 because they had routes (Austin, TX and Ontario, CA) I needed.
My earlier objection was that Neeleman exuded vast overconfidence unbecoming the head of a public company. I personally attended one of his talks, at a Westport charity event. Based on this very effective cheerleading, lots of friends bought JBLU stock at a peak…which is never a good idea in the airline biz.
(I also feared the overconfidence might extend to safety matters; at the Westport event I attended, Neeleman claimed that his Airbus fleet was safer than that of competitors who choose Boeing!)
Now that “the ego has landed,” I’m more inclined to like JBLU now that its strengths and weaknesses are exposed to all.
Speaking of how to honestly deal with something that can get away from you, has anyone heard about the new Starbuck’s T-shirt promotion on their Web site? It appears that the campaign which just launched a few days ago, has been so successful in generating traffic, Starbucks is going to be very hard pressed to deliver on the volume of t-shirt requests it’s received. Sure, the promotion clearly states, “supplies are very limited… and “We’re sorry, but we’ve run out of T-shirts. We only have a very limited number to give away each day….”
This to me is a classic example of not doing some good campaign planning up front. Given the volume of traffic on starbucks.com, the ability to exponentially increase the reach through the viral component (it’s posted on several free/promo sites) and the appeal of a t-shirt giveaway (there’s lots of experiential data out there on this kind of promotion) it’s not surprising that they are going to be hard pressed to keep up with demand. The results will be most likely be a poor ROI on the campaign itself (although I don’t know what the campaign goals were in the first place) and the potential for a messy PR situation.
Mila
I think you are far too trusting.
JetBlue was found wanting last week. The weather didn't work (which they couldn't control), however their business processes didn't work in response, nor did their information systems, nor did they handle customers at all well.
It is tempting to believe that CEO David Neeleman can fix all of these things in a single week, but it is unlikely. The history of the growth of many cheap-airlines is one of over-developing airline front-office activities whilst under-developing back-office ones. If JetBlue's back-office processes, information systems and staffing are truly broken, then Neeleman really has his work cut out to develop them so that they can consistently deliver the increased promises that he is now making.
And that will likely have to be reflected in the ticket price.
Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager