Air Apology: Lessons in Customer Advocacy

The airline industry is just starting to comprehend something many psychologists and economists have known for decades about human social behavior—people hate to lose more than they like to win. In other words, failures loom larger than successes.

Daniel Kahneman was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Science for uncovering the implications of this theory for many of the decisions and choices we make in our daily lives. His straightforward yet brilliant observation is directly relevant to the challenges the airline industry is facing today. It also explains why crafting the perfect apology is becoming so important.

The positive effects on customer satisfaction of experiencing several event-free flights can never compete with the negative effects of one cancellation or delay—and that's the problem.

Failures, mistakes, flight delays, cancellations, poor service, lost or damaged baggage, etc. are unexpected and inevitably lead to lower customer satisfaction levels. On the other had, successes (perfect, event-free flights) are always expected and irrelevant—when flights go well nothing really happens, which is why passengers and the media ignore them. We never see pictures of houses tornadoes miss.

With all of this in mind, a proactive approach to customer advocacy in the airline industry is becoming increasingly crucial to maintaining high satisfaction levels, because s--- happens. If Kahneman deserves his Nobel Prize then it follows that there are enormous value added benefits to be gained from addressing failures. Conversely, investments to improve the quality of a typical flight produce diminishing returns over time and are often a waste of money.

The marketing power of apologies in the airline industry was recently covered in an excellent article by Jeff Bailey, published by the New York Times on March 18, 2007. A good part of the article focused on Fred Taylor Jr., senior manager of proactive customer communications for Southwest Airlines.

Fred's 12 hour day is typically spent looking for failures and then crafting the perfect apology to address them. According to the article, Fred writes on average about 180 letters each year to approximately 20,000 passengers.

We have written extensively on the core ingredients of perfect business apologies—for example, acknowledgement of the hurt/damage; acceptance of responsibility; an explanation; a statement of regret/humility/remorse; some form of restitution or compensation, etc. Two of the ingredients, credibility and humor, were highlighted in the New York Times piece on Southwest Airlines.

With respect to credibility, it's very important for customer service representatives to have detailed information about the specific failure in order to convey in the letter an honest measure of understanding and sympathy for the passengers who experienced the problem.

Humor (when appropriate) is another ingredient that can help, although it goes without saying that joking about an event that disturbed many people could backfire. However, there are occasions in which humor can help (especially when followed by some form of compensation). In one of the letters of apology sent out to Southwest passengers after a flight was forced to return, Fred Taylor wrote: "During the return, a customer became ill and apparently ‘decorated’ three rows of seats—and perhaps a few customers. No word on how Linda Blair is doing.”

The marketing benefits are obvious—a well crafted apology letter will not only help to retain customers who may otherwise be looking for another airline, but it also leaves a positive impression with those who were told about both the bad experience and the proactive letter of apology, and those who read about Southwest's approach in the media. Consider the free advertising Southwest Airlines gets from the New York Times piece.

Turning a bad experience into what amounts to an advertisement for the airline was best demonstrated by JetBlue. The apology letter to JetBlue customers written by founder and CEO David Neeleman, the video that was posted on You Tube to express his regret, and the announcement of JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Right amounts to the perfect business apology—in fact, it is likely to become a generally accepted standard for how business errors should be handled.

Like Southwest and JetBlue, Air Canada, Continental and US Airways are sending off more letters of apology than ever before, precisely because they work.

But this trend also conveys a very serious problem facing most airlines today—customer standards for measuring performance are shifting upwards to accommodate rising expectations—people expect better service and automatic compensation when their expectations are not met. So any discrepancy between the service customers expect and the level of service the airline appears to be delivering will increase customer dissatisfaction. As expectations rise, smaller failures become increasingly more unacceptable and costly—another effect of Kahneman's theory.

If expectations and standards continue to rise, and if smaller failures continue to loom larger than major successes, then crafting the perfect apology for a variety of situations involving an increasing number of disgruntled passengers will become more important.

The most difficult challenge for airlines today, even those who accept the importance of issuing apologies, is that they have to operate in a post-9/11 world in which Washington's addiction to security will inevitably lead to more restrictions, scheduling problems, delays and cancellations, particularly if we experience another major security failure or terrorist attack.

Consequently, the need for a proactive approach to customer advocacy that institutionalizes the art and science of apologies is becoming more crucial for companies trying to survive in a very competitive airline industry—can Air Apology be far behind.

Return to our Research Section.

Or, learn more about Business Apologies.