VirginBlue shows exactly how NOT to email your customers
Wow, for a brand that I thought cared about its customer relationships, VirginBlue really messed up this week. Maybe Friday the 13th played a part and everybody wanted to squish the error in a hurry before the weekend began, but this episode was really worth thinking through a second time, even if it meant missing Friday night drinks at the VirginBlue watering hole.
Like unknown thousands of other VirginBlue customers, my wife, Boy8 and I all received an email from VirginBlue telling us that, even though we hadn’t yet earned enough points to qualify, the decision had been made to upgrade us all to ‘Gold’ — the top tier of the VirginBlue frequent flyer program.
VirginBlue's nice surprise that quickly turned nasty.
The following morning, we all received an email telling us in a brief and casual manner that a mistake had been made, we weren’t getting the upgrade, and VirginBlue wished us their “warm regards.”
And then, this email, which really couldn't have been handled any worse.
The effects of that email are still rippling through trade press, online media, Twitter and the blogosphere and will probably be in the weekend’s papers when I’ve had a shower and walked the dog to the shop.
Like most other customers who received the email, I feel like I’ve been treated shabbily by a brand that cared about its relationship with me. Unlike most other customers, I understand why the email made me feel that way, and what VirginBlue could have done differently to salvage the customer relationship it has enjoyed until now.
This will be hard for the IT department to understand, but it wasn’t so much that the error occurred, it was how VirginBlue handled the communication that has caused the crisis. The two emails couldn’t have been more inflammatory if they’d been deliberately written to offend. Allow me to break it down:
So some customers get a better deal than I do?
The first email made a big deal of how I’d been upgraded even though I hadn’t earned enough points. So now I know that even when the system is working perfectly, some customers get upgraded before they’ve earned enough points. That’s an unfairness in the business rules that should not have been communicated so widely, and when it was, should have been the primary focus of the communication. Something along the lines of, “we’ve reviewed our business rules in light of the system error and have revised our policy so that in future, no members will be discriminated against on their qualification for upgrade.”
The economics of rewards points
For me as a Red level member, being granted Gold status would bring significant benefits that I would value far higher than their likely cost to VirginBlue (that is, after all, the way points systems are designed to work.) To upgrade and then downgrade a customer — to reveal and then remove benefits of high personal value — is a big deal and it has a significant effect on your relationship with most customers affected.
VirginBlue (and anybody operating a loyalty program) must remember the true value of reward points is not their cost to the company but the way they make the customer feel.
Don’t be casual when you apologise — always over-do it
VirginBlue way underestimated the impact of the error to follow-up with a brief generic email beginning “Ooops!”. This was always going to end in bad publicity, but a better email could have softened the blow and salvaged the customer relationship.
The email should have been personal — from person to person, not from brand to person. It should have been written in the name of a VirginBlue senior executive with a signature and a photograph at the end of the email.
Next, the email should have detailed the approx. number of customers affected by the error, the cause of the error in layperson’s terms (not just “a system error”) and the steps taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Being too brief about it just gives the impression the company doesn’t take it seriously and doesn’t care if it happens again.
How to let them down more gently
Detailing the approx. number of customers affected helps segue into the most difficult — but most important — part of the email: explaining that it’s not possible to honour the upgrade promise.
When I received the second email, I was not one of thousands of affected customers, I felt like the only customer affected. It was only because I bothered to search for information online that I realised I wasn’t the only one affected. The email sent only said, “you do not qualify for that upgrade.”
The final element of a better email communication would have been to offer some small token gift in reparation. If VirginBlue values the customer relationship it has with me, it should show that it cares about the damage to that relationship by administering itself a penalty.
We’ve already talked about how points programs work because customers value rewards more than their cost to the company, so any small reward given at this point will earn VirginBlue more in customer relationship value than the bottom-line impact.
While offering affected customers a small token reward doesn’t add up to the benefits of Gold status, it does at least make the customer feel like VirginBlue cares enough to punish itself for the mistake. VirginBlue deliberately positions itself as the underdog in the Australian domestic aviation market and fosters an “us-against-the-establishment” relationship with its regular customers. That relationship only works if VirginBlue shows it values its customer relationships more than its competitors do.
By making such a dramatic error and then doing such a bad job of communicating it, VirginBlue starts to look much more like the establishment than the underdog.
15 Responses to “VirginBlue shows exactly how NOT to email your customers”
Leave a Reply
Additional comments powered by BackType
@virginblue new blog post: how not to email your customers http://bit.ly/4Vlds #fb #in #virginblue
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Analysis of @VirginBlue and their PR disaster: http://bit.ly/1VhKuj
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
RT @zander1979: Analysis of @VirginBlue and their PR disaster: http://bit.ly/1VhKuj
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Not their finest hour RT @bigyahu: @virginblue new blog post: how not to email your customers http://bit.ly/4Vlds #fb #in #virginblue
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Pwnd! RT @andrewlitvak RT @zander1979: Analysis of @VirginBlue and their PR disaster: http://bit.ly/1VhKuj
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
RT @bigyahu New blog post: VirginBlue shows exactly how NOT to email your customers http://bit.ly/4Vlds
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
RT @zander1979: Analysis of @VirginBlue and their PR disaster: http://bit.ly/1VhKuj
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
‘True value of reward points isn’t cost to company, but way they make the customer feel’ – @bigyahu : http://bit.ly/2QXhlW #virgingoldfail
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
“This will be hard for the IT department to understand, but it wasn’t so much that the error occurred, it was how VirginBlue handled the communication that has caused the crisis” – Can you explain why it would be hard for the IT department to understand?
A really interesting and pertinent post, it's just that the above quote seems like a drive-by on technologists, I'm sure I've misunderstood it.
Who says it was the IT department? Most organisations do not have the IT department handling email communications these days as it's a marketing function using a technology to distribute messaging. Further, for many organisations, the messaging engine capability often lies with a third party vendor. However, they may have been provided incorrect data to act upon. Hence, the error could lie with one of many people within the process.
As a note, I received the email, and didn't see the follow up and went over to the website only to find the message saying that I wasn't eligible. So, yes, I was disappointed, but also I do agree, the messaging left a lot to be desired. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they had offered 10% of your next flight. What sort of impact it would have had on people choosing VB over another carrier in providing a sales uplift – and thus a a great way to right a wrong. But alas, they didn't.
I'm in agreement with the other commenters here, this has NOTHING to do with IT. The technology worked perfectly, if anything too well. I'd be pointing the finger over the fence to our friends in marketing
Hehe, I love it when Mr Spock is on the bridge. “The technology worked perfectly, if anything too well.” or “But we designed the nuclear reactor to vent highly-radioactive steam into the atmosphere in this situation. The system worked perfectly. If anything, too well.”
Anyway, @wadeis, @benn, @geordieguy, I didn't mean to imply it was IT's fault, just that the reaction in this case (fix the fault, notify the customer) only addresses part of the problem. The bigger, more important part of the problem remains unaddressed.
To avoid any further misunderstanding I'm going to strike out that part of the sentence, since it doesn't add anything to the blog post.
Marketing, public affairs and senior leadership are absolutely to blame for both the incident and the way in which VB responded. The system, meanwhile, almost certainly performed exactly as specified.
Is this really that serious of a matter? I received the email too, thought “wow..that's strange..but okay”, then when I received the retraction, I figured “Oh well..easy come, easy go”. I wasn't upset by the manner in which Virgin dealt with it, nor do I expect anything in return for it.
Is this really that serious of a matter? I received the email too, thought “wow..that's strange..but okay”, then when I received the retraction, I figured “Oh well..easy come, easy go”. I wasn't upset by the manner in which Virgin dealt with it, nor do I expect anything in return for it.
Good on you for being relaxed about it, but yes, it was a big issue
for a lot of people if Twitter search is anything to go by http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23virginblue