Week 4 Reading Response
Tailoring a business letter to a specific person or group of people is a very important thing to do. It all has to do with rhetoric context, depending on who your audience is and what mood or attitude they have you have to write according to them. JetBlue had this situation occur in February and now we are responding to it by writing a press release and business letter. You have to image your audience (readers/customers) and write according to how you believe what they will want to hear from you!
I found a video on YouTube.com, I guess you could almost call it a documentarily of some I’d say college aged boys experience with JetBlue back in February. They kept repeating how they were very mad and all that they had to go through. I think that these people are very important because they are of a young generation and are good customers to keep and keep for a very long time. You must tailor your letter to them and try to convince them that you are sorry and keep apologizing. This is very important, I think that the tone and word choice that is used with this group of people is ideal and could make a huge difference in losing or keeping a lifelong customer. I plan on addressing this audience straight on and out front just saying what we did was wrong, it was a mistake and we deeply apologize. People our age don’t want to hear lines of lies and another thing that I see a lot of times are people our age get ignored and treated horrible. I think that this would be a perfect opportunity for JetBlue to step up and really make a good apology to these young men, they really are their future customers and it will make a huge difference.
JetBlue YouTube.com Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=SOo-tG9q2h0
Comments
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I agree that tailoring a business letter directly to a specific audience will produce a positive outcome. The writer needs to be able to relate to the audience and show that the writer cares and understands their frustrations. For the jetBlue customers, the writer needs to be sympathetic towards the situation and understand the customers’ aggravation with the crisis in February. It is also important to incorporate answers to questions that the customers may have in the business letter. This shows the audience that the writer cares about the customers and their questions with resolving the problems associated with the crisis.
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I agree with the thought that one must keep emphasizing on the fact that the company is apologetic. I mean that customer service should be best at any given time, especially at the time of crisis which I think Jet Blue failed and they succumbed to the pressure and the lag. For which I thing they should be apologetic and ensure to their customers of any given age that these things would not be ensue. I also like the point when you say that Jet Blue should step up and make it up to youngsters which can be potential life long customers. I think its always wonder for a company to have young customer to trust in them and having their business is very important.
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I think you make a great point about pointing out these young men’s age. If you write a generic apology to customers like this, you could lose life long customers and tons of revenue. When writing to them, JetBlue needs to be very apologetic. They need to make sure these customers know this will not happen again. Also, JetBlue needs to make sure they point out amenities that attracted customers to them in the first place. Knowing flights have DirectTV and low fares, customers (younger customers especially) will still want to use this airline, but only if they know everything have been completely fixed.