Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

So I just read this thread about air travel customer service. It made me think of JetBlue`s recent fiasco and resulting apology. For those of you unaware, during last week`s weather issues, JetBlue ended up stranding large numbers of planes, crew and most importantly, passengers for hours and hours at a time.

In response, the airline took out a full page ad humbly apologizing to its passengers in several East Coast publications. They also posted a video apology from the CEO online, and announced that they have implemented a passenger bill of rights (also readable at that link).

I`ve heard cynical reactions along the lines of "just more corporate damage control" and "a way to preempt the possible passenger bill of rights that`s circulating around Congress."

What do you think? Is this just corporate damage control, or is it an example of how businesses should act?

Having flown JetBlue before and been absolutely blown away by their customer service, I am inclined to take them at their word on this one. In my opinion, they did two things right here:

1. They recognized that their business model is based on differentiating themselves from the other major airlines and a hat-in-hand apology is certainly in line with that.
   
   
2. They did not promise that it would never happen again. Instead, they explained what specific steps they are taking to deal with the situation if it ever does happen again.

I really would like to see more of this kind of behavior among businesses large and small—I think it would restore a lot of the faith in "corporate America" that has been lost over the years, even if it is to a large degree just trying to get out of a scrape.

—Jess


-------------------------

Roughstock Studios | Notes From the Rodeo | Newsletter
Strategic communications without the selling of souls.

We just had a thread about whether there can be too much customer service. I think this JetBlue issue relates, particularly given the ongoing topic of customer service.

I expect JetBlue will gradually wind its way down into bankruptcy, or they`ll be bought out by someone else. The airline probably won`t recover from their fiasco. Why? Because they have no interest at all in customer service.

Some people will say this is a wonderful example of CS, and demonstrates the compassion and empathy of the company and its CEO. I disagree. I think it demonstrates a complete and utter disregard for anything at all other than operations.

Customer service is about empathy. It isn`t about after-the-fact cleaning up messes, recovering from public relations disasters, and fixing the results of stupidity. It isn`t about waiting for a crisis or problem, THEN fixing it. It`s a proactive, not a reactive area of business.

This is like the murderer on trial being asked to show "remorse." In theory, if there`s remorse, that makes the killing acceptable. It`s a "bad thing," and of course the killer is going to have to have a Time Out and a Serious Talking-To, but at least they showed remorse!

No, JetBlue could care less about their customers. They`re just "resources" and "assets" as far as the company is concerned, much like cows. The airline had some problem with legal concerns or safetey issues, so they casually grounded their planes, left them on the tarmac, and forgot about them. I`m sure the company and CEO were "stunned" to hear that anyone would complain!

Let`s see what happens, but I`m betting they`ll be out of business in a year.

I could not agree less.

(great little phrase above. I learned it from a psychology professor. When a student made a boneheaded remark, he would start with that phrase. Since it sounds so much like `I could not agree more`, the student would be smiling and thinking they were all cool and stuff until he hammered them with the facts).

 Jet Blue is a great airline, and their CEO gets it unlike anyone in this industry, except maybe Herb Kelleher @ SouthWest.  JetBlue had the foresight to not open a reservations center, but to provide their agents with home offices using VOIP and highspeed internet connections to simplify scheduling and cut office expenses. It works great.

The company also looked at what was wrong with the industry before they even started , stuff like too many different types of planes using too many different types of parts, and did the opposite: one platform, interchangeable parts.

What happened last week was mostly weather, crowded airports with no open gates, and a screwed up deal in their operations center.  They are fixing all of it, and they care a great deal about it never happening again.

Again, their CEO kicks ass, and he is a really smart guy.

They made a mistake once which their competitors make every single day. They are different, and will easily recover from this with a fixed operations system.
They care a lot about their customers.

And Craig, you can short their stock all you want. But I`m buying and holding.

May the best man win.

I think Jet Blue`s CEO did a great job dealing with the problem as it came
up. I don`t think their customer service did a great job. I think they did
an awful job.

The thing to keep in mind is that there is often a big disconnect between
executives and others lower down in a company hierarchy, like customer
service. Strategies and processes from the top sometimes never get
implemented correctly, or at all. This is common in business,
unfortunately. And I think this is the case of Jet Blue during their recent
ordeal. Just because the CEO does and says the right thing, and probably
feels it too, doesn`t mean that the company will act accordingly.

Sometimes it is corporate disasters like this that wake a company up to
the disconnect. We`ll see if they can push the CEO`s promises to the
ground floor of the airline and out to the customers.

This is a great distinction. I can`t speak to how the the customer-facing staff (mis)handled the situation last week, but I can say that my few experiences with JetBlue customer service has been exceptional. As a frequent flier, I go out of my way to choose both JetBlue and Southwest because the f2f interaction is soooo much better than with any other airline.


-------------------------

Roughstock Studios | Notes From the Rodeo | Newsletter
Strategic communications without the selling of souls.

It`ll be interesting to see what happens to JetBlue. ;-) As they say...or was it Ayn Rand who said...? By gosh, it WAS Ayn Rand who said that when there`s an irresolvable argument, reality will always be the final arbitrator.

I do understand that circumstances such as weather could cause the initial problem. What I`m basing my wager on is that nobody did anything about it at that time. A CEO may be fantastic, but unless s/he is running the details of every day operations, it doesn`t matter.

Someone, somehow, has hired all the people who went into the decision to just wander around without thinking about the effect of sitting on the runway. There are buffers and dampening effects as you move upward through the hiring process, but ultimately, you end up at the overall "mission" of the company.

JetBlue is a cattle shuttle. Hm....come to think of it, maybe they won`t go out of business. There always are people wanting rock-bottom prices, regardless of the service. If I look at it that way, then JetBlue shouldn`t have bothered with a public apology. They should`ve issued a release saying, "Hey, you get what you pay for, so deal with it!"

:-)

I`m not sure what you mean by this...JetBlue is not a discount airline. I have found that their flights (at least on the legs I fly) are often comparably priced or priced slightly higher than the majors.

If by "cattle shuttle" you are referring to their short commuter legs, most of that has to do with the stranglehold the majors have on airport gates. They have steadily expanded their coast-to-coast service, and have never taken a cattle call approach to their customers that I can tell.

Yes, the daily ops broke down severely the other week because they didn`t have a plan in place for such events. This was a failing of both higher-ups and management. But in all my years of flying—and I have seen and experienced a lot of massive screw-ups—I have never seen an airline respond as systematically as JetBlue, They immediately put those missing plans in place, they took full responsibility, and they were very transparent about the whole process.

Out of curiosity, have you flown JetBlue much? You seem to feel they are much worse than the other airlines, when I`ve found the opposite to be true. I wonder if you`ve had some bum experiences?

—J.


-------------------------

Roughstock Studios | Notes From the Rodeo | Newsletter
Strategic communications without the selling of souls.

Actually, no on two points. I`ve not flown JetBlue, and I`ve read a lot of really good reviews on JetBlue. I`m not entering into this because of a bad experience at all.

What I`m looking at is a growing trend lately, in all sorts of varied corporate situations. They go along, go along, and go along, doing really well. They`ve got a new concept, or a niche, whatever, and things grow rapidly.

Then something changes. In many cases it`s a big thing, but in other situations, a small thing like this one afternoon with flights sitting on the tarmac. But the world is moving very quickly nowadays, what with global commerce, high-speed information services, and so on. What used to be "just a mistake," remedied by a company expected to be around, doesn`t seem to be that way anymore.

I`m basing my supposition on the next steps for JetBlue more on a "pattern" process than on anything directly related to the specific company. I`m not sure ANY company can sustain a public relations problem nowadays when it gets beyond a certain level of publicity---a "tipping point," to borrow from another thread.

In fact, I don`t know what`ll happen. I really am curious, because this story, to me (and to me only), strikes a certain chord. What I`m more interested in is whether or not my perception of a pattern is right or wrong. I hope that makes sense.... :-)

I`m going to add a secondary post, because I`ve been doing a lot of thinking on this. What`s my basis, never having flown JetBlue, for saying they`re in trouble? Am I shooting from the hip, and if so, why do I hold to my intuition the company`s going down?

I`ll offer four points on a trending sheet: Denny`s, United Airlines (UAL), Bed Bath & Beyond (BBB), and Wal-Mart.

Also, my argument on the JetBlue issue is whether or not the runway problem is an initiating cause, or a symptom---an effect of something higher up in senior management.

Denny`s used to be everywhere, and a common place for late-night food. The executive management and ownership were doing whatever they were doing, and nobody thought about it. Then came the allegation of bigotry. It hit the news.

Some would say that it was an isolated event. Others would say it was a hidden corporate mentality. Nobody worried about it, the company apologized, laid out a plan, and that was that. Until the next time. Now, although Denny`s still is in business, and they make sure to have ads on TV featuring minority customers, they`re something we all used to know. Not out of business, but much smaller in presence.

UAL was the same thing. Everyone flew them, everyone liked them, and things were grand. Then there was a strike, rumors of bankruptcy, and people got stranded. "Urbanl legends" talked about people who`d had to forego important trips, and so forth.

Is United out of business? No. But a number of people don`t want to risk flying UAL if they have a honeymoon trip, or some other important event. Others don`t fly the company because they perceive a bad attitude, and lack of interest in the employees and customers.

It`s about perception, not about facts. It`s also not because the person who started the airline is a liar. It`s about the company policy changing, in small, incremental ways, until there comes a "tip-over" point, and something goes seriously wrong.

BB&B hit the scene as an excellent place for kitchen utensils, bed sheets, linens, and stuff (as opposed to things). Whoever was their head buyer, they had a knack for always having new and interesting, useful things in that kitchen department. The company got bigger, made money, and life was grand.

Then, presumably, the head buyer left or was fired, or disappeared. More likely, executives figured they could save money hiring someone younger.  Over time, in a barely perceptible level, BBB didn`t have this, that, or something else.

Linens & Things came on the scene, and there was competition. Over time, not recognizing the lack of relevancy or currency in their product, the company introduced operational changes to make up for reduced traffic.

They believed it was a result of competition, changing times, or whatever else wasn`t their fault, not a shift toward poor policy decisions. BBB has passed its peak. Will they go out of business? Who knows, but the growing perception is they`re "just another not so great store."

Finally Wal-Mart, where the children have taken over following Sam`s death. The company is a Goliath, or juggernaut, or whatever other word for gigantic. It has a huge inertia, and little competition that`s a serious threat. For now.

But we`ve noticed a change in their inventory. We`ve heard they`d like to become perceived (perception again) as a more up-scale store. True, there are stories about how awful they are to work for, but those are mostly untruths. It isn`t about those stories...it`s about the increasing number of times they`re out of stock, have discontinued something, or don`t have enough cashiers to prevent long waits.

I think Wal-Mart has passed its prime, too. Will it stay huge for the next decade? I don`t know. But the single event that changed was the death of Sam Walton, and his particular passion for customer service.

Michael Crighton produced "Jurassic Park" as a first attempt to demonstrate the delicacy and vulnerability of complex systems. The more complex the system, with more variables, the easier it is to bring it down. I think with today`s intensely competitive airline industry, the post-9/11 problems, the decline in previous levels of infrastructure, and all the rest, we`re seeing a "tipping point" type of complex situation.

It`s possible that JetBlue will continue. But I see this tarmac problem and ensuing apology as a symptom. It isn`t "the" cause of anything. But I believe it`s a symptom of a complex of incremental policy changes that show the start of the company`s decline. I may be wrong, but that`s what I`ll watch over the coming years.

I think we have far too many interlocking systems these days, all of which are increasingly necessary and critical. It works only because people believe it works, and because we can bring rapid response to any single small thing that breaks down. But when more than one breakdown takes place, situations rapidly deteriorate into catastrophy.

Craig: Thank you, Dr. Succinct...

Just kidding. I know it takes awhile to lay out an argument.

You are correct that interlocking systems, global supply chain, etc. are part of the problem. Stuff happens, and it may or may not be symptomatic of a greater underlying issue. Maybe the ground crew were just morons. In this case, however, it was a symptom of a greater operational problem at JetBlue, and they immediately jumped on it and are making immediate large changes to insure it will never happen again.

Ever gotten an apology in the USA Today from UsAirways for stranding planes on the tarmac for 3 hours? Is it just that 8 hours is so absurd that the 3 hours seems so minor (even if the trip is only a shuttle from NY to Boston?)?

Businesses are dynamic, and you`re right that adaptation - and, even better - being the actual change agent instead of the one who has to do the adapting - is the key.

I love the book, `Blue Ocean Strategy`. It`s a large basis for my own company`s strategy and positioning in a crowded market. USP`s like disruptive technology, judo strategy (being smaller but more nimble than your giant competitor), more responsive to clients, more able to flex given market conditions - those things change the game and make the people at my global competitors go `oh, &*&*` in their conference rooms.

Inertia, in other words, can be a real b*&*^ sometimes. But for those of us poised to react quicker, change faster, and drive innovation rather than simply react to it, not only will we survive, we`ll thrive in an environment like this.

JetBlue is one of those companies. Starbucks no longer is, Wal-Mart probably never was except for price (which is not the only factor when it takes 30 minutes to check out), and Brand Counsel, LLC definitely is!