Turning Customer Crisis into Customer Care

Customer Servces

Turning Customer Crisis into Customer Care
by Jill Griffin



Want some fresh, new insights on how to serve customers better? Your next customer care crisis can be a great teacher. Let's look at how a passenger crisis in late March taught the Southwest Airlines some invaluable lessons about serving customers.

"This is not a drill" were the first words Southwest Airlines spokesman Ed Stewart heard after picking up the phone and being informed that a Southwest Boeing 737 had overshot a Burbank, California runway. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt, but at the time of the dreaded call, Ed and other Southwest executive didn't know that. Thus began Southwest's first crisis response in a 29 year history of no fatal accidents. For years, Southwest had diligently studied other companies' processes for handling disasters and practice crisis management using role play drills. But this real time experience would teach the airline lessons on how to care for their customers under the worst of circumstances that no drill could ever point to.

A faulty escape slide blocked the forward exit. So, shouting through a bull horn, a flight attendant directed passengers to leave their luggage behind and quickly exit though a rear door. Safely outside, these relieved passengers quickly became cold passengers since an approaching storm had driven the temperature down sharply. Says passenger Lawson Brown, 78, of Van Nuys, California, "They left all of us standing in the middle of the road on Hollywood Way for an hour." Southwest says the delayed wait was because rescue officials needed to make sure passengers were okay because transporting them out on buses. The police said time was needed to find shuttle buses and them maneuver them through the maze of emergency vehicles.

Meanwhile, at headquarters in Dallas, five senior Southwest executives set a command center receiving one hundred calls the first hour. CEO Herb Kelleher held a news conference about three hours after the accident. While this was happening, 50 employees were on a plane to Burbank. Among the group was flight safety manager, Mark Clayton who had been in bed with bronchitis. There would be no sleep that night for Mark and many Southwest employees as they quickly moved away from their day-to-day jobs and into positions to help passengers in the aftermath. Says Ginger Hardage, head of communication, "Job descriptions went out the window."

Employees serving on the Family assistance teams had been selected and trained by Southwest in advance. Employees were chosen based on mobility and their ability to pass a 'wellness test' which screens for medical emotional and family problems. Explains Joyce Rogge, the marketing vice president who ran the assistance effort, "If you're under stress of your own, you can't help someone else." A true appreciation for what these passengers and families are feeling is crucial for the team members. That's why Southwest employees had closely studied how other airlines (including SwissAir and TWA) had responded to crashes. But in an effort to understand such a crisis even better , family assistance team members had also heard a presentation from the widow of a passenger who was killed in the 1994 crash of US Airways near Pittsburgh. Says Rogge, "She talked about how she was notified, how she had to call her son in college."

Airport Hilton in Burbank became the command center for Southwest's Family assistance teams. By the next morning, calls were being made to passengers---medical care, counseling and even groceries were offered. One of the passengers, an owner of a pizza shop, was under doctor's orders to rest but he was anxious about his store. After talking to Southwest, he hired two friends, at the airlines expense, to make the pizza deliveries. All passengers received travel vouches and ticket refunds along with letters of apology.

Receiving one of those family assistance calls, passenger McCoy thought he was okay; but the next day "It really hit me", he says. He had trouble sleeping and concentrating and without warning, would just breakdown. He called the airline's main 1-800 number but the Southwest agent was grappling with where to send the call. Says McCoy, "I was left on hold and finally hung up." His next call was to Southwest headquarters who referred him on to the Red Cross. Southwest had provided a help number in a letter to passengers sent right after the accident but McCoy had overlooked the number. In retrospect, McCoy feels more responsive was needed on the part of the reservations agents.

With this experience behind them, Southwest can now rethink various aspects of its crisis plan. Says Rogge, "In a situation like this all bets are off. You learn an awful lot very quickly about how life really works."

Most companies, thankfully, don't have to deal with life and death crisis situations like Southwest. But nonetheless, this 'close call' provided the airline invaluable insights about what else was needed in their customer care plan. When your next crisis occurs, use it as an opportunity to learn more about customer service. You and your customers will come out big winners!


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Jill Griffin is the best selling business author of Customer Loyalty and co-author of the new book, Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers and Keep Them Loyal . She can be reached at www.loyaltysolutions.com and jjillgriffin@earthlink.net.