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BUSINESS | Noah Brier

Sincerity and Cannibalism

Two words that have a huge impact on your business.

February 21, 2007 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 5 COMMENTS

I don't mean to be a JetBlue whore, but it's time to talk about them again. Looks like my last post about them preceded a hurricane (or blizzard) of negative press.

Clearly passengers were right in their anger towards the company, especially those that were stuck on the runway in the plane for like eight hours. But the sign of a strong company (and person) is how the bounce back from adversity.

I think JetBlue's Customer Bill of Rights and CEO David Neeleman's apology are a step in the right direction.

What really amazes me about the video is the sincerity. Everyone says you need to be passionate about your customers and your business, but few people live it. You can tell when someone really cares: You can see it in their eyes. When I watch that video what I see is a man who is deeply disturbed by what happened and is making every effort to ensure that it's never repeated. Maybe it's an act, but if that's the case I'd be pretty damn impressed. As James Hong put it:

[Customer Service is a good sign] of a good company. not just because it makes customers happy, but because it shows a company CARES about their customers. They understand who they are building for, and i'm sure sensitivity to customer's feelings extends down to the engineers building the product. Often times, the things that make a product great are very low level details that arise as a result of the engineer giving a damn.

Neeleman is committed to making the changes necessary and that's an honorable thing. It also is a good thing for business, as these were most likely changes that would eventually have needed to be made anyway.

Which plays nicely into one of the themes that's been floating around in my head lately: Everyone says as a company you have to always be on your toes and evolving, but that's easier said than done. How do you create a culture that's not afraid to cannibalize itself?

Every system needs a disaster of sorts in order to regenerate life. Forest fires can actually be good for the environment. The problem is it's easier said than done. Most companies get comfortable in a field or offering a specific set of services and don't constantly strive to redefine themselves. For some reason the first thing that comes to mind is high-school dramas: Every one thinks it's going to succeed when the kids go to college but none ever do. That's because the same formula no longer applies, but they continue to try and shove it in there.

Sometimes you've just got to rethink your business from the ground up. James Hong from HOTorNOT (sorry to quote him again) wrote a great piece about staying hungry. After making a lot of money with HOTorNOT he is looking to completely revamp it. He's changed the corporate structure, take a serious paycut (down to $24 a year) and set up a stock option program to keep employees hungry. All of this is new, so there's no way to say how it'll turn out, but you have to respect him for trying (especially with the cash cow that is HOTorNOT)

I guess the bottom line in all of this is that if you don't cannibalize your business, someone else will.

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COMMENTS

1Clay Parker Jones

Yeah, that was a sincere apology.

But CEOs of all companies make big, sincere statements. They genuinely believe what they're saying, and what they're "committed" to making happen in their companies. But they're not always (if ever) around at the customer-contact level where they can actually make a difference. It's hard to get low-paid employees at the customer service level to be enthusiastic and helpful, or at the least empathetic to the struggles of their customers...especially if it's a big company, and part of a big industry. Point is, change is tough. It's good to have a guy at the top who cares, but making real changes is a difficult thing to do. Here's to JetBlue for taking a step in the right direction.

February 21, 2007

2Bonnie in Albuquerque

I agree with Clay Parker Jones in that it is hard to get low-paid employees like customer service to care and be sympathetic most of the time, but if a company has a corporate culture of valuing their employees then I don't think it that hard. I work for an OD consultant. We train management consultants and do a lot of work with large corporations. In the customer service training we strive to create an atmosphere of "community". It does not always work, but if each employee has ownership in the wellbeing of the company then it seems to be better.

Also in response to Noah, There is a gym that I used to go to where a 10 year old drowned last summer with 12 life guards on duty in the middle of the day. Everyone waited for a response and they brushed it under the carpet. Many people including myself started going to another gym because of this. They had a disaster but not the thought to respond to it. They lost a lot of respect and business from this incident.

February 21, 2007

3Clay Parker Jones

Bonnie, I agree. If a company has that kind of culture, it won't be tough to get people to pitch in and lend a hand, even at the lowest level.

My point was that there's a lot of well-intentioned CEOs out there, many of whom run companies that have horrible customer service. They probably believe that their company has a great corporate culture, but they're probably just drinking their own Kool-Aid.

February 21, 2007

4El Gaffney

Clay, I think you hit it on the head with "Empathy". One of my clients is an insurance company and we recently met with managers of their Claims dept. At the end of the day, we had a lot of interesting ideas for making the process better, but the one thing that was most clear was the need for the first person a claimant (think person who just had a car accident) spoke to (often a low-paid employee) to show empathy. It's a simple as "Are you okay?," "I understand how tough/frustrating this is," "I'm sorry."

I remember the first headline I read, "JetBlue CEO 'mortified'..." Mortified! I loved it. That's people language if I ever heard it -- sincerity and empathy.

My question is: At what point do you stop with the "sorry's"? Got an email today from Neelman with the same sincerity and apologies and by the end I was like, "Alright already. We know you're sorry. Let's move on." Of course, I wasn't inconvenienced and maybe the avg JetBlue customer hasn't seen the YouTube video, so personal is still nice. All I'm saying is pretty soon, it starts to sounds like he's appealing to us to be empathetic of his situation. And that's not what I want from a brand.

February 22, 2007

5Noah Brier

I think you guys are very right, nothing is more important than your front line employees.

Mark said it well yesterday: "Credit where credit is due - they have not tried to hide their failures and they may continue to differentiate them as a brand. However, it was interesting that Neeleman's statement is basically an admission of how badly prepared the brand was to deal with a negative experience. The Four Seasons famously allows it's staff to spend up to $400 without approval from a manager in order to fix a problem. Is Jet Blue truly the brand it pretends to be if is not empowering staff to fix issues, and do staff even understand the brand?"

If you're really committed to your customers you need to give the people who interact with them the power to make them happy.

February 22, 2007