I’m prone to brand loyalty and I’m pretty loyal to JetBlue Airlines.
I flew with them during their scheduling crisis. I was lucky and my flight was not delayed or canceled. Having flown during that window, I just received an e-mail from JetBlue apologizing but more importantly laying out a specific commitment to their customers for how they will deal with service interruptions in the future. This includes a customer bill of rights with specific remedies.
A good way to prove you are worthy of trust is to respond with real change when you’ve disappointed those who trust you. I’m curious to see how this plays out for JetBlue.
Sincere admission of accountability when a problem occurs without excuse and empathy goes a long way for maintaining my trust. I applaud David Neeleman and JetBlue for how they handled the unfortunate events. The apology letter apology sent to every JetBlue member makes no excuses. This letter states: “Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that you, your family, friends and colleagues experienced. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel, and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.”
No company is perfect. There will always be problems that occur. How a company treats customers after it makes a mistake shows you more about the company’s character than how it runs when everything is going smoothly. I will gladly book future flights with JetBlue because they were fairly transparent about the problem that occurred, took full accountability for the problem (without excuses), empathized with their customers, and outlined steps to improving.