United Airlines Crisis Management: PR vs. Customer Culture

Introduction

A recent scandal at United Airlines — involving a routine overbooking of a flight and a non-routine removal of a passenger after none volunteered to de-board — thrust the airline into a deeply negative spotlight. Its image was tarred by widespread public disapproval amplified through social media, and the company's out-of-court settlement with the affected customer did little to restore its reputation. United's attempt to contain the crisis proved futile and raised a broader question: Are companies desensitizing customer service by relying too heavily on crisis management via public relations?

From all appearances, United would do well to refocus its attention on revitalizing its customer service approach rather than relying on its PR team to clean up the mess. This paper discusses United's crisis management approach and examines an alternative approach that could better address the underlying issues.

The PR Problem in the Digital Era

The problem with relying on a PR team to address crises in the Digital Era is that it has become virtually impossible to contain a story and control a narrative once social media picks it up. Traditional news outlets used to be the primary source of information, but the Internet has fundamentally changed that dynamic. Today, any individual can create and spread news via social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Strategic communications has been revealed to be a two-way street: consumers now have access to their own form of strategic communications — social media — just as businesses have their own in the form of public relations teams. The result is a battle of communications. As the case involving the physically removed physician demonstrates, the consumer has far more power to control a narrative today via social media than the business has via PR.

Strategic Communications and Marketing vs. Social Media

United has attempted to rely on strategic communications and marketing to construct a positive public image. This type of strategy is effective only as long as the consumer has no other information — or access to information — that tells a different story. As Lamb (2009) points out, today's consumers are the most informed in all of history. Before making a single purchasing decision, they can quickly research a company online, compare prices, read reviews from other customers, and reach a conclusion based on the evidence they gather.

Strategic communications and marketing are barely a blip in the great flood of information consumers can now access. United's use of PR to market its way out of a scandal that makes customers deeply uneasy about flying with the airline is like trying to counter an army with a bobby pin — the consumer is simply too well-informed. United's only real hope is that consumers have a short memory. This may hold some truth, as studies have shown that social media "news" has shortened the news cycle exponentially and compressed memory spans as well (Newman, 2010; Von Muhlen & Ohno-Machado, 2012). However, this is a shallow hope that fails to reckon with the realities of new technology and new media, particularly the way individuals share stories about human rights violations that resonate broadly.

Underlying Organizational Issues

If United's employees and management teams were making a more conscious effort to solve problems — such as overbooking — and to treat customers as they themselves would want to be treated, would United even face such a severe PR problem? One might point to social media as a major factor in how companies struggle to address stories that spiral out of control through viral videos and instant information sharing. However, if the company itself were better at handling the root-cause issues that generate such social media fodder in the first place, perhaps the PR problem would not be so immense.

Perhaps United's problem is, at its core, a problem of organizational culture — that is, a sociological problem rather than a communications one.

The Sociological Solution

As Southwest Airlines and Virgin Airlines have both demonstrated, putting people before profits is the most effective way to build a successful workplace culture (Gallo, 2013; Srinivasan, 2014). This approach signals to workers that they are valued, fostering a sense of satisfaction and a genuine desire to be at work. That feeling is then passed along to the consumer, who wants to share in the experience of flying with an airline that clearly takes pride in what it does and wants its passengers to feel good as well.

Both Southwest and Virgin have made remarkable strides in growing their companies in recent years despite stiff competition from larger airlines — and the key to their success has been a positive workplace culture nurtured from within. By taking a sociological approach to the business — one that places people at the heart of the organization — rather than a purely profit-driven approach that elevates the bottom line above all else, both Southwest and Virgin have succeeded in avoiding the kinds of missteps that airlines like United have stumbled into in their rush to maximize seating capacity and then in their poor handling of the situation when customers fail to respond as expected.

Conclusion

The era of controlling a narrative through marketing and PR is now contending with a new era — the Digital Era — in which social media is the tool of the consumer, used to spread information instantly around the world. Companies like United are outmatched in the power they can wield to reach the public through traditional channels. In light of what digital media and new technology have enabled consumers to do, it is now most important for companies to put the individual first, since it is the individual who holds the power.

Putting people before profits can indeed be a profitable approach — as both Southwest and Virgin Airlines have demonstrated. People want to be respected. Society wants to be appreciated. And new media has granted individuals a power they have never before possessed. Companies still relying on the old methods of crisis containment — PR and marketing — are like libraries stocked with nothing but print books and no digital media: no one will come to them, because the environment and the age have passed them by.

References

Gallo, C. (2013). How Southwest and Virgin America win by putting people before profit. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2013/09/10/how-southwest-and-virgin-america-win-by-putting-people-before-profit/

Lamb, C. (2009). Essentials of marketing. Cengage.

Newman, M. (2010). New media, young audiences and discourses of attention: From Sesame Street to "snack culture." Media, Culture & Society, 32(4), 581–596.

Srinivasan, M. (2014). Southwest Airlines operations — A strategic perspective. Airline Industry Articles. Retrieved from http://airline-industry.malq.net/southwest-airlines-operations-a-strategic-perspective/

Von Muhlen, M., & Ohno-Machado, L. (2012). Reviewing social media use by clinicians. JAMIA: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 19(5), 777–781.