Reading Response Week 3
I believe that the Jet Blue crisis was effectively handled by the management given the circumstances. We need to consider that prior to this unfortunate incident, Jet Blue was an example for other airlines for their customer service standards. It was the first time that anything like this happened. I would like to give them some props due to couple of reasons. The situation was caused due to extreme weather conditions and later on due to government regulations on crew and aircraft flying times. Jet Blue had no prior experience of handling this kind of a situation and they made the decision to ground their planes in lieu of their customers’ safety. Secondly, as a frequent flyer, I can definitely vouch for them as I know that other airline don’t even do the things Jet Blue did in circumstances like that. At least they did have people there; in many circumstances like this that I have been in, the only medium of communication are the information screens. On this note, I would like to bring up that American Airlines cancelled 200 more flights than Jet Blue the same week so the events that occurred at JFK can be called incidental rather than disastrous and people need to understand that things like this can happen to anyone and be a little more flexible.
I believe that Jet Blue’s response was very ethical and it had a lot of sincerity attached to it. They were okay with the fact that they lost millions but maintained that there customers come first for them. They genuinely admitted there mistake and put up very measurable ways to ensure their customers would be relatively more satisfied if an event like that occurred in the future. Jet Blue had enough credibility established in the past that there customers believed them. A recent market research survey also shows that they delivered there promises and are still ranked 1st among airlines for customer service.
The guidelines for effective communication would help me to emphasize on how Jet Blue understand its customers’ feelings and how much they value them. There will be a consistent emphasis on building credibility about the value of customers at Jet Blue and how the some effective measure would prevent a similar event happening in the future.
Comments
RE: Reading Response Week 3
You point out in your first paragraph that you have had other experiences with JetBlue and so you are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. In essence, JetBlue has established credibility with you. Marshall Alcorn has a book titled Changing the Subject in English Class that discusses an issue that is important here: affect. Alcorn claims that people have visceral connections to things that shape the way they view the world, and these connections usually aren't severed merely through logical discourse. How people feel about something is as important, if not more important, than the "facts" of a certain scenario.
This is important for us, because it isn't always the right rhetorical move to explain or be as logical as possible (what we call logos). It might be the right move to try and demonstrate that you are the kind of person your audience can identify with (what we call ethos). This may mean simply apologizing and stating that regardless of what happened, you are working on fixing it and making sure that it doesn't happen again. This move is made all the time in politics, because most popular political forums inherently discourage complicated stances on issues. What is encouraged is identifying yourself with traits (I'm a Texan, I'm a compassionate liberal, I'm tough on crime, I'm a southerner, I grew up in the ghetto, I'm a christian, etc.) and letting your audience fill in the blanks that you're their kind of person and that you will act as they would.
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I agree with you that their response was very ethical in the way that they handled the situation. Even though they knew they were losing millions of dollars every minute those planes were grounded they still showed that the most important thing to them was their passengers and customers. Like you mentioned in your post, Jet Blue has gained some good creditability over the years and so now it has some loyal customers that realize this situation is unavoidable and that Jet Blue did everything they could to resolve the situation. I think overall they did a good job and people need to realize that every airline had to cancel flights due to the weather and that no one is able to perfectly predict the weather.
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I totally agree with you when you mention that the events that happened at JFK were incidental and people need to understand that things like this can happen to anyone. The thing is that when the incident occured people started panicking since they were acting more like a huge group and in this behavior panick could be very contagious. Mr. Tirrell talks about credibility, which in my opinion, after reading and learning how JetBlue managed the crisis, they earned it. If JetBlue had no credibility, then even after Mr. Neelman's statement the company would have not resurfaced the way they did. Once you lose credibility and no one believes what you say, then it is almost impossible to gain it back. In my personal opinion, if a person or company loses its credibility, they lose all trust and confidence, and this is something almost impossible to earn back.
Reply Reading Response Week 3
I agree with you that the airline did everything they could have done to make the passengers feel easy. Devastation happens everywhere and ice storms are just the same. The company was not that old of a company and probably didn't have much experience with storms like this one.