Quote of the Week: Skeletons in your closet?
Remember the big Valentine’s Day 2007 ice storm at JFK Airport?
jetBlue cancelled 1000 flights. Passengers were stuck on planes for up to nine hours. It took a week for the airline to get things back on schedule.
During that week, CEO, David Neeleman, seemed to appear everywhere. He was on “Fresh Air” (NPR), Today, The David Letterman Show and YouTube. He also apologized in full page ads in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other newspapers across the country. In every message he accepted responsibility for handling the weather situation poorly. And he promised that it would never happen again.
On February 20, just six days after the storm, jetBlue published its passenger bill of rights. AND it was retroactive so that the passengers affected by the events on February 14 received compensation, an amount estimated by Neeleman as $20 to 30 million.
One month later, there was another storm that gave them the challenge and opportunity to put their new systems to the test. Mr. Neeleman showed up on Youtube again to tell everyone how they did.
There was no way to get rid of this skeleton. They could have let it just stand there and scare people off. Instead, they made it dance. And dance. And dance some more. Like a dance marathon. It was good for customer loyalty, for morale, for productivity and overall performance.
Read about more dancing skeletons here: 10 Dancing Skeletons
Read more about mistake management here.
copyright 2010 – Business Class Inc
