Business Mentor
First-Class Corporate Communications

I want to create a clarion call to help rally the IT troops and energize them to improve customer service and communication. It would be something like this: "Remember the Alamo!" But for us, it's more likely to sound like this: "Remember the airlines!" Please let me explain.

My combined roles of CIO, director of strategic planning and "the lean manufacturing guy" require me to travel frequently. As you surely know, air travel just doesn't always work as advertised. By the time you read this, you will also have heard JetBlue executives apologize for stranding passengers on grounded planes for 10 hours during a February ice storm. Chief among JetBlue's failures was a lack of crisis communication at the outset.

That's a dramatic example, but the airline industry provides daily examples of how we, as IT executives, should communicate. In my experience, the major airlines handle disruptions in two ways. The first -- the bad way -- is to cease communications; the second -- the good way -- is to tell you everything that is and isn't happening so that you as a passenger can make some rational decisions.

For example, a recent flight departure time of mine was changed from 5:15 p.m. to 6:02 p.m., and later it was changed again from 7:20 p.m. to 9:20 p.m. Now, I'm guessing that the airline knew pretty early on that 5:15 and 6:02 and 7:20 departures weren't possible. (We learned the plane didn't even take off from its origin until 7:30.) I lost valuable time because of the airline's gap in communication with its customers.

But on another recent flight, here's what happened: 45 minutes prior to departure, the pilot presented himself at the gate and announced that there were problems with the aircraft. They did not yet know the cause of the problem -- just that water was condensing on the hydraulics -- and they could not predict when the flight would leave. He explained that if we wanted to find alternate flights, we should start looking. He then returned to the plane. Every 15 minutes, he came back to the gate to give us an update. Knowing the status gave us the information we needed to either stand by or get moving. I had a tight connection, so I took a taxi to a nearby, smaller airport.

In the case of my first flight, I had no options because I had no information (and boy, was I frustrated). In the second, everyone (even those who stuck it out and waited for the plane to be repaired) was disappointed, but not frustrated; passengers knew what was -- and wasn't -- happening.

The Right Way to Communicate

So how does this relate to corporate communications with customers?

Suppose our spam and virus filters go on the blink. We quickly communicate to everyone who could experience trouble while we work on the issue. We then give frequent updates. Will this help us solve the problem faster? No, but it will provide customer service. By simply knowing what is going on, customers can pursue alternatives. They can fax documents rather than use email; they can use the telephone to create a meeting agenda. Not knowing what's going on limits their choices (and increases their frustration).

Constant updates might seem like overcommunicating to us, but our frame of reference is skewed (after all, most of us did not go into IT because we are extroverts). What feels like overcommunication to us just might be the minimum standard for quality customer service. So here's the clarion call: "Remember the airlines!"

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