How to generate good publicity from bad service
Based on my observations, the success of a service provider company, in a competitive market, is mainly based on two basic factors:- Market Demand for your products (The higher demand, the higher the revenues will be - in parallel, fighting for market share is always vital).
- Customer willingness to purchase from your company/products.
You will say, yea, yea but what about "Quality of the product delivered to the end-customer"? On that question, my answer will be: You are right, quality is important, BUT the most important is the image of your company, the reputation of your product, this is the only way to generate sales. In other words,
(if you are not in a zero-bug tolerance business, like aircraft manufacturing or missile industry), you don't need to have a "perfect" product to start generating cash.
In order to improve the customer willingness to purchase your product,
one way is to invest your time, money and talent on improving the customer relationship by creating/developing a strong and durable relation.
I learned from my short experience that even problematic events can be used to generate good publicity and develop the so-wanted durable customer relationship.
I received a letter from Jet Blue last week. I feel that this letter is the example par excellence of the above method. Take 5 minutes, read it, it is worth every seconds... I'm convinced any company can learn from the below...
Dear JetBlue Customers,
We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.
Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue's seven year history.
Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our
customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and
other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft,
and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue's pilot and
inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the
airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President's
Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at
1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further
hindering our recovery efforts.
Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and
inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue
was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and
making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses
to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.
We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate
corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a
comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to
you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures
for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a
result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and
even more customer responsive airline than ever before.
Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of
Rights-our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational
interruptions going forward-including details of compensation. I have a
video message to share with you about this industry leading action.
You deserved better-a lot better-from us last week. Nothing is more
important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us
the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the
positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.
Sincerely,
David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways
Impressive, no?
Note that in this case, the message passed to the customers is even stronger than previously analysed as the
reason for the bad service was somehow totaly out of control.
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