JetBlue is a company which is praised as a good example of providing impressive service to its customers. Unlike others low-cost airlines, with enough space in each seat, the customer don't feel uncomfortable when they choose this airlines. It also provide other great service: friendly employees, various snakes and drinks, and leather seats with television.(Although you have to pay to watch it, it costs only $5 for two hours.) With those excellent services, JetBlue had been grown rapidly and became a favorite airlines to the customers. However, what happens in Valentine's Day in 2007 made it face to serious crisis that it could have lose a lot of existing and potential customers. Here is an article about the event.
A storm brews
It started with a winter ice storm forecasted to change to rain. With that prediction in mind, JetBlue staff at New York's John F. Kennedy iarpost continued to load flights and allow them to taxi to the runway. But conditions didn't clear as expected, and some passengers waited for as long as six hours to return to an open gate (Planes continued to land in the poor weather; but FAA regulations regarding icy conditions prevented flights from taking off.)
That day, only seventeen of JetBlue's 156 scheduled departures lest JFK, a fact that caused ripple effects throughout the system and displaced crew and aircraft. In subsequent days, JetBlue management canceled more and more flights, angering thousands of passengers, until finally, on Feb 20, normal operations resumed.
David Neeleman who was a founder and CEO of JetBlue, apologized to over 131,000 customers affecteed by the cancellations, delays, and diversions, offering varying levels of compensation, and on Feb 21, issued a 'Customer Bill of Rights' which offers explicit compensation for a variety of departure delyas and onboard ground delays. It even promises $1,000 if, through overbooking, a customer is involuntarily bumped from a flight.
During the crisis, Charles Mees, JetBlue's CIO, created a database to track crew locations and contact information, later adding new functions that would allow pilots and crew to type in their locations via mobile Internet devices.
Mees also set the goal of doubling the number of agents who could simultaneously use the company's reservations system and of getting a Web-based rebooking system up and running so that customers could reschedule a flight at the airport.
For his part, Neeleman focused on employee cross-training so that all 900 of the corporate employees in JetBlue's Forest Hills office could assist at nearby JFK during any future operational crisis.
(reference : http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5880.html)
For his part, Neeleman focused on employee cross-training so that all 900 of the corporate employees in JetBlue's Forest Hills office could assist at nearby JFK during any future operational crisis.
(reference : http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5880.html)
American press and customers were impressed with JetBlue's immediate and sincere apology and counterplan, and its consistant customer-focused attitude could protect the company from big loses. Moreover, from this crisis, JetBlue turned this threat into the opportunity to be a better company. It was a growing company, but if that crisis had not happened, it wouldn't have known what it should improve exaclty to be better.
Today I studied Strategic Direction(Chap.4). Strategic direction can be communicated by sharing its mission which means 'what the organization is' through internal and external stakeholders, the business defination has the firm's values and purpose. JetBlue's mission is to be the learding low-fare, low-cost passenger airline offering high quality customer service to underserved markets and customers who are looking for the best value in their filght, and the goal is to provide the best, most affordable flight experience of any air carrier while providing superior service. It is not always easy to follow its mission when the company is faced to dilemmas of stakeholder's different interest. Some people said JetBlue did not need to provide too much reparation like that, and they could find more efficient ways to aviod big losss. However, I think JetBlue knew what is the most important things (recovering its reputation and keeping customer's trust), and showed excellent responsibility based on their core value which is offering the best flight experience to its customers. It succeeded in recovering from the crisis and people still love to experience JetBlue's excellent service./posted by 20500580
