It Could Have Gone Very Differently for Spirit Airlines
Today, Mark Goren of Transmission Marketing blogged about Spirit Airlines’ poor customer relations incidents. The CEO of Spirit apparently wrote an internal email about a customer service situation that eventually made its way to some bloggers…
“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”
The CEO acted on impulse, but the only reason that ended up being a bad thing was because his impulses are based on flawed character. Life is full of impulsive, improvised moments. Our character must be in tact if we are going to make spontaneous choices.
So, let’s imagine if the opposite had happened.
What if, instead of having poor customer relations, Spirit had awesome customer relations. If, for example, when Alex Rudloff was informed that his flight was canceled, the Spirit employee stayed on the phone with him to schedule a new flight, give him a refund, or provide him with a voucher - that would have been far preferable to him waiting for hours on the phone, internet and in person only to be told he couldn’t have a voucher and had to reschedule his flight on Spirit to arrive much later than he wanted (no partner airlines).
Most people’s impulse reaction to good customer relations would be to tell others about it. If things had gone differently, you might see blogging posts that encouraged people to fly Spirit because it’s such a great experience. Impulse informs impulse. Ask yourself who’s impulse you’re being influenced by - and whose impulse are you influencing.
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[...] irony of it all (besides the company name being Spirit) is that it could have gone very differently. A good customer experience would have yielded positive word of mouth (FREE ADVERTISING!) and [...]
Hi, Nathania! I like the way you’ve built on my post, focusing on the conversational approaches that could have made a difference. This is a sad example of bad service, obviously an outgrowth of the thinking from the top.
Question: Would you relieve Baldanza of his duties?
I agree, if they would’ve just tried or worded the email differently. I hate traveling but it’ll always stick in my mind who the bad ones are, however if I hear of a good one I’d jump at the chance to fly with them. I have four kids, there is no way I’d want to waste my time with bad customer service or an airline.
@ Mark - If Baldanza is open to change, I’d let him stay on board. If not, I’d push for a new CEO.
@ homemom - When will companies learn that customer service influences brand reputation more than maybe any other single factor?