WTF is going on with airline brand standards?

Following a string of customer service and PR disasters, Designate’s Jason Triandafyllou says it’s time for airlines to get their act together.

"It seems that airlines are rarely out of the news for one reason or another, and most recently it seems to be the more established/legacy/full service airlines (what is the opposite of a low cost or no frills airline these days?) that are grabbing the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Remember the days when flying might have been a pleasure, something to look forward to, and where the name of the airline carried positive resonance? When there was something more than purely functional and commoditised about the experience?

Well, it could be argued that in this country, Stelios and Easyjet shook up the market, and set the ball rolling, reducing expectation of customer service or any kind of quality experience in favour of cheap fares and travel for the masses. And they really did revolutionalise and open up the market – for good and ill. And then, Ryanair then took up the mantle, further opening up the skies, Europe and many hitherto unknown destinations and airports, all the while entertaining us with truly awful customer experience, fully embracing the old mantra that ‘any PR is good PR’.

Not any more.

Ryanair has been going to great lengths to become the ‘Nice low cost airline’, and has seen corresponding returns. Monarch too has worked hard and spent big to shake off the old mantle of a charter airline where impersonal herding was the norm, now putting a customer service and ‘going the extra mile’ ethos front and centre and leading with that message as a brand differentiator.

Who, instead, is going viral with horror stories?

United Airlines shocked the world with their forcible removal of a passenger on an overbooked flight. They will be counting the cost of that for a while.

Then American Airlines got in on the act, with their staff behaving like belligerent Southern Railways employees who can’t take the strain anymore.

Less dramatically, but in the same vein of a brand taking its eye off the ball, Emirates has been making the news for all the wrong reasons too. Careless and disrespectful internal communications are bad enough – surely a premium brand such as Emirates doesn’t have such an attitude towards its customers? But once this is inadvertently exposed to a customer, to let four weeks go by and the intervention of a national newspaper before issuing an apology?

Feels like the brand manual needs to be dusted off and given a good internal airing in a few places.

For all the money spent on advertising, PR and sponsorship, not to mention the multi-billion pound investments being made in customer-centric technology and hardware, companies need to be aware that they are not fully in control of their brand reputation. Your brand is only as strong as the opinions of your customers, and these days, they are exponentially amplified and broadcast in the blink of an eye, and the tap of a smartphone.

To prove the point, and for the final word, let’s go back to Ryanair. There are scary elements to this little story, but check out the coverage they got. Just google ‘Accordion Player on Ryanair’. Headlines for the right reason.