It seems that putting the customer first, or being ‘customer-centric’ has become a thing. Last week at the World Retail Congress in Dubai, executives stood on stage and told the audience that the way forward was to focus on the customer and their experience as if it was a new and revolutionary insight into retail success.
On the one hand, you have to wonder how something so fundamental can be presented as best practice in 2017, but in reality, there are still a lot of companies that pay lip-service to the idea of ‘customercentricity’. While the CEO can get up on stage and get a few tweets for saying the company is focusing on the customer experience, recent events have shown that a single customer can bring a company to its knees.
The dust is still settling from an incident this week involving United Airlines. The event is destined to become a case-study in the power of social media and public opinion versus company policy. It is also provides insight into who United thought were their real customers.
At the time of writing, it seems that United forcibly removed a passenger from a flight in order to accommodate 4 of its own staff. This kind of failure in policy and procedure happens every day, perhaps not so violently, but there is no way that this could happen if a company was truly putting the customer first.
Early responses from the company were cold and belligerent. Even as the views of social commentary rocketed, there was no apology, no understanding of the outrage… until
Just encountering some light chop, we're gonna leave the seatbelt sign on. pic.twitter.com/vLdK5xWDTY
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 11, 2017
Nearly a billion dollars wiped off the company valuation. Suddenly, the CEO’s and board’s real customer, The Market, was revealed. No doubt, the company’s big data driven dashboards were also showing that bookings were falling and the predicted costs of damage control and potential legal action started to outweigh the costs that would have been incurred by responding in a ‘customercentric’ manner to begin with.
Airline PR teams are some of the best in the world. No doubt the are drilled to respond to catastrophic events, however it seems that physically assaulting a customer was not one of them. Nevertheless, a response was crafted. But the damage has been done.
United CEO Oscar Munoz: I’m sorry. We will fix this. https://t.co/v8EPGsiDCi pic.twitter.com/eOPiYcagvo
— United (@united) April 11, 2017
If this had been the first reaction of the company, then they could have avoided the collapse of brand equity that continues to ripple through the twittering classes, but it wasn’t.
There are two issues here. One – United Airlines is not a company that puts the customer first. Two – United Airlines was not equipped to deal with a PR crisis, despite having been found wanting in the past.
If United was a company that put its customers at the heart of its operation, then they could have found alternatives. They could have increased the incentive to volunteer to leave the plane. They could have arranged alternative transport for the customers or their staff. But the people on the ground, are not empowered to make these decisions.
This incident should be a wake-up call for all companies, not just airlines. Every customer is important. One customer, if treated badly, can cause massive damage to your reputation, and company valuation!
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