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Don't Leave Your Customers Stuck on the Runway

Posted by Josef Katz on 3/7/2007 at 9:09 PM
Posted in Marketing, Entrepreneurship

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Customer service lessons from the JetBlue disaster

JetBlue is still recovering from its February fiasco at JFK Airport in New York. You remember - snow and extreme cold brought air travel to a standstill, but JetBlue decided to keep flying anyway. Its planes rolled out onto the tarmac and got stuck there, stranding passengers within view of the terminal. It was 11 hours until the airline figured out a way to get them back indoors. Then things got even worse the next day, when flight cancellations inconvenienced 100,000 more JetBlue customers.

Afterwards, JetBlue took steps to rebuild its customer relationships. The CEO, David Neeleman, took responsibility, and JetBlue issued vouchers for free flights to passengers who were inconvenienced.

The company did what it could to manage negative fallout in the press, but the remedies were generally perceived as “too little, too late.”

What all business-owners can learn from JetBlue’s problems . . .

Because all businesses live or die on their ability to satisfy customers, you can write a business plan based on the critical lessons from JetBlue’s disaster, no matter what your business is:

Put customer service first. Regularly remind everyone in your company that customer satisfaction is central to your company culture.
Take charge. If you own a company that hits a crisis, you need to step out, take responsibility and say that your organization is committed to making things right.
Plan. Have contingency plans in place so that your people know what to do in the event of an emergency.
Learn from experience. After a crisis has passed, analyze it to find out what went wrong. There is no other way to prevent it from happening again.

Above all, tell your employees that they are encouraged to resolve customer problems on the spot, without waiting for approval from above. With the right training, a ground crew member or another JetBlue employee could have helped out and JetBlue would have looked good in the eyes of its customers, not bad. Empowering the people in your organization motivates them, protects you and solves big customer-service problems while they are still small. That is a win/win/win strategy all around.

Editor's note: There's lots more to be learned about customer relations in The Marketing Mastery Program from Trump University. Investigate it now.

Josef Katz is the Vice President of Marketing at Trump University.

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11 Comments

Posted by Daniela -Madrid on 03/08/2007 3:21 AM

yes to communication and responsibility for the relation buildet.
If crisis, well, passed , as final target in mind, a jetblue is an emergency ,are days we pass no matter what as long the checkink is done to the jet also before and after landing these continuous exposing on freezing can affect the motor engine.
Daniela

Posted by Gary A. on 03/08/2007 6:36 AM

I wonder if JetBlue could have been trying too hard to please its customers by attempting to take off in an ice storm and get its customers to their destination.

If so, this is a case where trying too hard completely backfired.

gea

Posted by Daniela -Madrid on 03/08/2007 8:25 AM

balance time..when a crisis happend, well, it happend with someone from where it was born, guilty and harsh words. when this vicious circle grow in years, you know, is crisis, and ask for the counsel. bussinesses have rules and regulations, other crisis have no sense but manifest free and can affect everything. that is, help.

Posted by member1528271 on 03/08/2007 8:57 AM

Chinese student, Nathan

Disaster is a disaster or an opportunity

In survey, costomers like a enterpraise can overcome problems better even than a enterpraise runs smoothly so far.

That means you should treat a "problem" as a "hope".

The "hope" will lead your enterpraise to get bigger and stronger.

I appreciate to leave a comment here, thanks!

Posted by member1445505 on 03/08/2007 3:37 PM

It works. The organization I used to work for ended up going in that direction. It's almist like they pioneered it at that time.
Employee quality training and empowerment.
It works, in the right hands. Only a minute few of employees can not handle it. With the right training and environment most can and love it.
You win. They grow.
Jerilynn

Posted by Daniela -Madrid on 03/08/2007 10:22 PM

BlueJet few records show that Customers Concerns prevailed even in 2000 to survive at a Bermudas 3angle, so even if not experienced the automat pilot says that worked on base of instinct so landing safe and after rechecking able to welcome on board
*to fly is*t allways silky ,delays can favour the freezing but customer trust and serve the brand so speaking.so if confused by locations as icestorms, remote gived on automated pilot backfired but fire whithin customers safe landet.

Posted by Daniela -Madrid on 03/09/2007 6:05 AM

What I*ve learned from the Blue Jet case, is sure!!
the core of Mr. Trump words:
Know Thyself! say TOT(roumanian language or as Mr. Champollion y.1790 the best expert in the join of deep roots between old china and old egyptian language, cocreating the copt language, the ripe of rosetta stone is in hands of God but as Napoleon said once. how possible is to walk on the water, take the boat) it is the only way to be able to cosign for serving thissame vision regarding Customer Satisfaction, ensuring the ability of flexibility,
timing and results; as much that is a two way continuous feedback, the secret lies in CO head line of the internal politic of quality: cooperation in midst of crisis , co join the best solutions of the commomn plan, co learn the class of a crisis after end co fun of go forward to develop further the Entrepreneur Journey having Satisfaction as Custommeter
Cosign coseal c*mon, that*s the way it is! have a cogreat day!
Daniela

Posted by member1499085 on 03/09/2007 7:07 PM

I had never heard of JetBlue until last August when I had to complete a case study for my strategic management class . One thing I did find out in my research, was the numerous awards they had won regularly for outstanding customer service. However, when their SNAFU occurred, they tried to do damage control quickly. Hopefully, this will be an isolated incident, and they will be able to learn from this, so they can prevent anything like this in the future. Just like winning sports teams, the saying what have you done for me lately applies. Passengers quickly forgot about or didn't care about JetBlue's past history. It goes to show you that people are human and make mistakes. I feel confident that JetBlue will move forward from this......rickyl

Posted by member1248770 on 03/13/2007 11:38 AM

Hello, Josef , Who is, this Mark and mike because, I am studying real estate, as well, and , I would, like to talk with them as, well , I have my ticket's, for, the VIP meeting, my Aunt is suppose to go with me that day. I, am looking up in Collegeville and, the monthly meeting's are once a month, in Collegeville. I, am like so, pushing for, the degrre in real estate, so I can sell house's, and so forth. I, even called a real estate agency, just to take, the test's and get it over with. I even went to Charle's Mole's, for information and applied, their as, well. I, called Remax to ask to just, take, the test's, and get it over with basically, because, I have chikdren, to raise and quite frankly, I have the intelligence. Can you please, let them know, I wolud like to get in contact with them, my email is christina ym730@netzero.com

Posted by member1540665 on 03/14/2007 9:33 AM

This year I put in sponsorship proposal For Jet blue with sponsor wise
For Our snowboarding blog. This blog has good sponsors already like
Whistler Blackcomb,Heli holiday,whistler vacations ,whistler lodging,time of your lives travel. The proposal was put in in January

2007.We wanted to be sponsored by jet blue because it fits in with what we are doing. While we were waiting we got excited after all we now had our blog sponsored by many companies and Jet blue was to complete that circle.We Left for the half pipe event that we were covering because

we were now press because of the blog.Things are going great so we head out to the airport flying jet blue to Seattle to drive across the boarder of Canada just to fly Jet Blue. We got to the check in counter and all our bags were over weight. So I talked to the top clerk to see if I could get the over weight dismissed.I showed them the jet blue proposal and

let them know we were traveling to do a video production about whistler and that we were not sponsored by them but would like a pass on the over weight they said yes we save 360.00 going and also on the way back.The trip went great we keep jet blue on the mind of everyone we

talked to. about a week after I got home I read an email that was turning us down from Jet Blue even with my eagle scout credits and awards from The City of New York they still said No for now.We did not ask for a lot in the proposal we just wanted to get to one mountain that we would

cover once a year to different location and they would be listed on every blog we own and we would do lots of creative work as wellYou tube and buzz ads included. With Feb 14th behind Jet blue you would think the would see that this would help. They might not know the power of blogs just yet or they do but just can't help out just yet we will keep trying.

John A Ciampa

Posted by member1540665 on 03/16/2007 12:35 PM

Jet Blue learned it's lesson.Today We are getting hit on the east coast again with an ice storm. This time they did the right thing and informed passengers to stay home. Good thing because the world was turning on the news to see what they would do and they passed all the bad buzz about today great move Jet Blue.

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