Brandversation British Airways Style

I'm impressed with the British Airways folks.  In the interest of transparency, I should tell you that British Airways is involved with my firm's Inner Circle program.  Makes sense, since their tagline is "Experience what we know.  Business is done better face to face."

 

 

This is more than a tagline.  They are serious about the importance of face to face meetings, not only because it's important for them to get people onto planes.  It appears to us that this love of "F2F" is in the British Airways dna.  We know they're right; there are times when F2F beats any other effort at communication.  Think first meetings with a prospect or posible business partner; think complex contract negotiations; think handling difficult relationships.  My company takes this so seriously we designed our logo to make the point.

 

Simon Talling-Smith is EVP of the Americas for British Airways and he's terrific.  He addressed the audinece at last year's 360 Summit but yesterday was the first time we actually talked.   It was at the Inner Circle conducted yesterday here in New York and he shared several British Airways examples of enhancing relationships with the airline's customers.  They go out of their way to dream up ways to exceed expectations.

I mentioned the "United Breaks Guitars" mess that garnered millions of eyeballs on YouTube after United badly handled a situation involving a musician/passenger whose guitar was damaged by baggage handlers at O'Hare.  United's  failure to handle the problem ended up making that airline a subject of negative conversation that some pundits have estimated cost United a $billion in negative PR, all thanks to YouTube replays of the song the embittered passenger wrote and posted on YouTube.  

Simon talked of a program--back in a time when British Airways had its own bad run of lost luggage.  Simon's team put in place an initiative that gave special attention to customers who had their luggage lost on BA flights.   It ended up creating positive vibes that spread well beyond the passengers directly involved.  They told their friends and family about how well British Airways had handled their situation and the goodwill spread exponentially.  It's true that customers expect so much these days they give too little credit for being treated well in the normal run of business.  The critical element is how they're handled when a mistake has been made.   Companies that have learned how to turn bad situations into good ones end up with cheering fans. 

Toyota's problems these days are clear indication they didn't read the memo spelling out how to handle problems, especially now that the Internet makes it possible for a small handful of disgruntled customers to turn the world against you and your brand.

What kind of disaster program does your company have in place, to be rolled out and executed quickly when things go wrong (and, we all know that at one time or another things do go wrong)?Make sure you have thought of how to initiate the right kind of conversation, the best Brandversation possible, among your current and prospective customers.  It could turn a bad problem into a triumph.