A while back I was sitting on the runway in Orlando as my homeward-bound Jet Blue flight was about to taxi toward takeoff. Like just about every other flight that hadn’t already been canceled that day on the Eastern seaboard, ours was a couple of hours late departing. A good way of how JetBlue turns customers into brand advocates.
Customer retention efforts are most effective when they’re proactive, not reactive. In other words, it’s much easier to set customers up for success than to frantically rescue at-risk customers later on. Proactive customer support involves providing your customer with the necessary resources to succeed right from day one, not just when things go wrong. Here is an example,
The lead flight attendant gets on the P.A. system and says something very close to:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we know we’re late taking off, and even though it’s the weather and not something we caused, we’re going to comp everybody’s movies for this flight. We know you’ve all had a long day and we want it to end with something nice and relaxing. And for those of you who were supposed to be on the Continental flight and ended up here, we don’t ever want you to go back.”
Check out our thoughts on customer focus.
The mood on the flight — which could have been a rather dreary late evening affair — took an immediate upswing. People joked and smiled and made eye contact. They were noticeably brighter and calmer as the flight progressed. And I’m writing about the experience today and several thousand business travelers are reading about it.
What enabled this relatively small act of kindness and allowed it to become a major brand statement? Midflight, I went to the back of the plane and asked. I wanted to know the policy that allowed a flight attendant to make such a call.
“We’re allowed to make almost any decision,” the flight attendant explained, “as long as we can justify it on the basis of one of the airline’s five core values: Safety, Caring, Integrity, Fun or Passion. If we can tie doing something back to one of these principles, the decision is going to be supported by the company.”
What JetBlue is saying to its employees … “If you act in support of the values that really matter to our business, we want you to take risks in order to care for our customers.”
This is a very simple concept, eh? But how many of us put such a thing into practice with our own people. Sit down today with your employees and do what Jet Blue did.
Create a culture of empowerment based on the values that your business is built on.
