Media training lessons from Jetstar
While the saga of Jetstars’ stranded All Black fans became a communications quagmire, with
claim and counter-claim, there is one particular element we would like to reflect upon. It is the way Jetstar’s spokesperson responded to questions about the incident during an interview with Radio NZ’s Morning Report last Monday.
Jetstar’s spokeman Simon Westaway was not prepared to give any ground, let alone apologise. The key messages were: These people were late; we will debate this any time anywhere; we carry 12 million people a year.
To paraphrase: No ifs or buts, we were right; these people were wrong.
This approach even seemed to ruffle Morning Report’s nice guy Geoff Robinson, and was almost certainly the reason for on-going criticisms of the airline, some of which became quite toxic in the online space.
Jetstar seems to have seriously misread the New Zealand culture as, in all likelihood, a local company and a local spokesperson would have been more conciliatory with messages like:
We take all complaints seriously; we will review the matter thoroughly and examine our processes; and If we are wrong, we’ll take it on the chin and talk to these customers about making it right. (Apparently there was CCTV footage that could be reviewed).
Such an approach would have de-escalated the situation which quickly went from simmering to boiling.
If you are going to adopt this staunch, brash approach – no nonsense, no vacillation, let’s move on – just be sure you’re bulletproof… Today (Friday), Jetstar’s own reported actions suggest the airline did make some errors. They are apologising to some customers, offering discount vouchers and reviewing their check-in performance.
Public 1, Jetstar 0
Tags: communications, culture, Customer relations, Geoff Robinson, Jetstar, messages, Morning Report, Radio NZ, response, Rugby
June 26th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Still waiting on our apology, not interest in vouchers.
Please bear in mind that Jetstar have claimed we were 22 minutes late when the photos I took (that Jetstar staff demanded be deleted) were taken 12 minutes after checkin (i.e. 10 minutes before Simon has stated to the media that we were in the buildings).
Someones lying and its not the customers.
Jetstar is asking for toxic responses online when they lie about customers, and try to intimidate them from complaining with police and security (who thankfully didn’t want anything to do with it)
Also its worth noting that it was a Jetstar staff member (named Alfred) who told us that there was noone we could take the complaint up except him, and he even challenged us to go to the media!
You are quite correct however. Jetstar could have stopped this nightmare on day one by:
* Treating their paying customers like humans
* Taking ownership of the problem
* Not antagonising customers by calling security on them when they complained
* Not lying to the media and then being caught out
* Apologising for the inconvenience
And above all displaying empathy.
Instead they have tried to blame the customers for their own mistakes, then got caught up in a web of lies. Unfortunatey jetstar doesn’t realise that in the group of 10-15 passengers that they have lied about there are:
2 Company Directors of an Entertainment/Promotions Business
1 Chief Executive Officer of a Transport Company
1 Chairman of a Group of Transport Companies (not related to the above)
Not the sort of people you want to challenge to go to the media.
Happy to provide you more of a background to the story if you would like by email.