More on the Jet Blue Saga
Now for some old news that bears repeating: the internet has empowered consumers. Big time.
No one better represents this new empowered consumer than disgruntled Jet Blue passenger-cum-blogger Genevieve McCaw.
McCaw and her boyfriend were among the unfortunate people held “hostage” in a grounded Jet Blue plane for 11 hours last month.
While most angry consumers complain in a low-profile way, McCaw took her beef with Jet Blue online. She created a blog called JetBlueHostage.com. In short order (it took only a few weeks), the blog became a popular clearing house for people who got snared in Jet Blue’s Valentine’s Day disaster.
So what’s a CEO (or anyone else) to do in this age of internet-empowered individuals? What if you’ve got a rabid blogger on your tail—one who’s making a cottage industry out of reopening your self-inflicted wounds?
If you’re David Neeleman and you’re interested in protecting your hard-earned reputation as a customer-friendly operation, you arrange a meeting with that rabid blogger.
Now, it’s important to note that you can’t make everyone happy. Some consumers are intractably angry and will just suck you dry if you attempt to placate them. But you can’t and shouldn’t ignore all unhappy customers. Particularly the ones with wildly popular blogs.
So what happened at the meeting? Well, it seems that Neeleman didn’t do enough to mollify McCaw, who says she left the meeting with less inclination to fly Jet Blue again.
Want to know my cynical interpretation? The popularity of McCaw’s blog gives her no incentive to bury the hatchet. I think she’ll fume away until there are more people saying “get a life” than “you go, girl.” But how long will that take? And what will be the cost to Jet Blue?
I think Neeleman was bold to meet with McCaw. What do you think? Leave a comment with your $.02 below.
[Hat tip: Micropersuasion]
Photo from Flickr under Creative Commons license
Comments
I'm with you Jeb—I think she'll loose steam as the rest of the blogosphere does.
I'm also impressed that Needleman met with McCaw. It shows the kind of geniality and transparency that people are looking for from corporate America.
The moral of the story, I think, is that it's important to go the extra mile for past (and maybe PO'd) customers. Needleman might not win McCaw's business back, but I bet he's appealed to a few new customers in the process—or at least secured some of the low-hanging fruit that needed some extra coddling. (And who wouldn't.)
Posted by: Megan Mahan | March 13, 2007 11:45 AM