This is the story marketers should use as a case study.
For the entire story, which has already been told quite well, check out these posts:
? Alex Rudloff??s, ??Do not fly Spirit Airlines?
? Alex Rudloff??s, ??Ben Baldanza from Spirit Encourages Awful Customer Service…?
? Mack Collier??s, ??Another ‘ignore bloggers, this is what you get’ cautionary tale for companies.?
In short: Alex had a terrible experience with Spirit Airlines and wrote about it. It generated huge response in comments and posts from other bloggers. His original post, ??Do not fly Spirit Airlines? is now ranked third when you Google, ??Spirit Airlines?.
Next up came Alex??s post about a couple that missed a concert in Atlanta because their flight from Orlando was very late. The concert was the only reason for their trip. The couple penned an email to the airline and, in classic style, the CEO of Spirit hit ??reply all? instead of just replying to the other employees copied on the email. Here??s what he had to say:
“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.”
And that??s when things exploded ?? different sites and news outlets picked up the story, the airline responded with a second P.R. nightmare about NEVER responding to bloggers. The bad vibes continue on.
So where should Spirit go from here? For one, they should start listening + monitoring. If they had been, there??s a good chance this all would never have happened in the first place. Imagine how powerful a comment from a Spirit employee would have been on Alex??s original post. A sincere, honest comment in an effort to reach out to Alex and those leaving comments on his ??Do not fly…? post may have started to turn the tide. Continued follow-up could have also helped.
What now? I like this suggestion from my buddy Duncan, which we talked about over lunch the other day (paraphrasing): ??They should set up a site, call it thenewspiritairlines.com and start an intelligent conversation.?
In short: invite feedback, let their real efforts to correct these problems be known and try to stem the tide. Or, as Mike Moran would put it, this is their chance to ??Do it wrong quickly?, see what works, what doesn??t, adjust and get it right.
If Dell could come out of Dell Hell ?? many months later ?? Spirit can do the same. They??ve just got to start trying.
UPDATE: Robert Gorell writes about a crazy experience he had with Spirit Airlines. A must read.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:53 am
The guy’s mistake….hitting reply to all was stupid and cam back to bite him on the ass.
The underline “screw the customer” mentality is a bigger issue.And it’s a culture that starts at the top. Not monitoring customer feedback is a symptom….the same as not caring that a client missed their concert.
The underlying disease is apathy towards the paying client. Plain and simple.
The solution isn’t monitoring etc.
They will never care as long as the disease is prevalent right from the corner office.
The solution is to become customer focused. To care. When they do, then they will start to engage.
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
[…] Mark Goren at Transmission Marketing related a story about how little Spirit Airlines cares about its customers. Seems the CEO accidentally replied to all on a customer complaint, which eventually made its way to a blogger: ??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.? […]
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Jamie > You’re absolutely right, monitoring is not a solution, it’s a tactic. A tactic that would be a good place to start ?? once Spirit starts giving a crap.
Question: If caring comes right out of the corner office, then I assume you’d start by canning the CEO. Right?
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:11 pm
I am saying that if the board of directors cared about customers, they’d hire someone who cares for the top job.
I am a firm believer in the fact that corporate culture starts at the top. Period. If they want to be more customer focused, they have to replace this guy. Not because he screwed up his email ….we’ve probably all done that , but because he was actually instructing a subordinate to say FU to a customer.
How many times has this happened that didn’t get public?
A customer-focused leader would come in, attempt to change the culture and slowly eliminate those who don’t follow the mantra of “the customer is king”.
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:15 pm
By the way, in response to your comment about monitoring….my point was actually that they don’t monitor because they don’t give a damn what the customer thinks. In order to care enough to engage with customers, you have to first actually realize that in business, having customers is a privilege, not a god-given right.
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Jamie: Couldn’t agree more! Love the passion here, bro, would’ve been an excellent subject for your own blog. (Hope to see that day come soon, if I haven’t already mentioned that to you.)