The other Shel, Mr. Holtz, has a great post about Jet Blue's disdainful attitude toward PR folk who wanted to give them advice on how to handle the problem caused by customers stranded on runways in Valentine Day blizzards. They ignored them. Not only did they ignore them, they have put the name of people contacting them on a list that they will share with others on who not to use in a crisis.

It seems to me that this is yet another disturbing shard of evidence that Jet Blue, America's favorite airline, according to many surveys, has developed an auditory problem that is going to do it damage in the long run.But maybe, what the company spokeperson meant to say, was that this
referred only to the ambulance chasers, not to everyone.

Debbie Weil,
author of the Corporate Blogging Book, was the first person I know of
who pointed out the company had a blog and should be using it. Since
the blog is very corporate and pretty lame and doesn't allow comments,
I'm not so certain it would unstick Jet Blue's plugged ears to the
public. Debbie has sent them a copy of her book and received a nice call saying that it will be passed along and someone will call her if they are interested.

We shall see.

I am watching all this as a Jet Blue fan. I am planning to write about this seven year old company in Global Neighborhoods as an example of a low-cost network that is changing lives by letting people who could not previously apport it, go places and meet others face to face. Now, the story I was planning is getting complicated.

Evidence is starting to stack up that Jet Blue is starting to become guilty of the first lethal sin of large organizations. They don't want to listen. Yesterday I wrote how a Jet Blue service representative had a justifiably distraught customer and her child removed by police from a claim office. Today we hear implications of a Jet Blue enemies list.

Sooner or later it adds up.

I think Debbie Weil had a good idea. A blog would be a great tool to use in a crisis. Seems to me there's another book that wrote about it as well. But the issue here is not to blog or not to blog.

The issue is whether or not a company listens.

This is the key issue between large organizations and there markets. They don't want to listen to customers.

We buy a product or service from a branded company and a problem develops. We go to the web site and after a difficult search we find that if we want to contact a human we should email "[email protected]." We call the 800-line and get lost in a voice processing system that is essentially telling you that the human you have called is no longer available. If you need further assistance, too bad. We really don't care."

Blogging is a great tool to use, because it is a highly efficient way to listen to your customers. The most valuable part of a corporate blog is that you hear-pro or con- from your most passionate customers. Instead of being handed a filtered and sanitized report from a mid-level underling, a CEO can very quickly see a realtime sample of what customers are thinking.

Right now, as a customer, I'm beginning to think that maybe Jet Blue says the right thing. But it doesn't listen so well.

To that degree, they should be humiliated and mortified.