Delta – Disaster… and communication
I fly Delta – I am currently stranded in the “computer outage” barrage of grounded flights. It stinks – but it is reality. It has only been a few hours, I am sure there will be many more headaches before the situation plays out.
Twitter alerted me about 45 min ago and the chatter through the waiting area drew all of us to overload the search engines for updates. Confirmed – Systems down – flight routing and weight computers coming back on, but slowly.
About 15 min after the first idea that there was an issue, the captain came to the desk and explained the issue – in detail. Provided facts to the best of his ability and {gasp} even made an estimate (with disclaimer) on when we might have a solution. It was a very honest – human – compassionate announcement done by a professional who knew what he was talking about.
What a disaster – angry passengers, delayed connections. It would have been easy to hide behind the desk agent or make an announcement heavy in CYA lingo. Own it early – inform your “clients” – communicate.
Our team at Lit & More has lived by this mantra for more than a decade. We work diligently to make sure mistakes or outages never happen. We are dedicated to a flawless experience…but occasionally an experience is less than perfect.
We own it – and communicate. We are honest.
Over the years, newer members of our team have suggested skewing the facts to make us look better – don’t do it – it will only be worse later. If you remember that people value communication and information more than false comfort, you can make it through that embarrassing phone call or meeting.
Read this article from one of the greats Harvey Mackay – he says it way better than I ever could.
http://www.uexpress.com/harvey-mackay/2016/6/6/dont-run-from-your-mistakes
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