I’ve held off a couple of weeks now from picking up Alex’s story because many others were already lending their amazed voices to the cacophony. But seeing Etan Horowitz’ assessment of Alex’s blog post and its effect on the Spirit Airlines customer service debate made me eager to join the fray.
Many of you know Alex through seeing his name appear in my blog posts and through comments he’s left on the site. He is a hard working, web visionary who’s hell bent on seeing Orlando become the cultural and new media hub of the Southeast. He is often blogging about Orlando’centric topics and is a founding member of LikeMind Orlando and Florida Creatives. Additionally, Alex also expresses his entrepreneurial tenancies as the CEO of his start-up company Emurse, an online resume and job-hunting site.
I post today to simply bring attention to the power that one man’s voice can bring to bare on a subject in our digital age. With the accessibility the internet provides to the market place of ideas, no matter one’s station in life, if their idea has true merit it may ultimately make headlines despite the humbleness of it’s origins.
Alex’s article is case in point. He didn’t set out with a vehement desire to crush Spirit Airline’s bottom line but simply to inform his friends and family of his experience and ward them from entanglement with the less than desirable customer service practices of this low fare air carrier. Ultimately, however, his story resonated with other snubbed passengers of Spirit Airlines and this word of mouth affirmation has brought his blog post to the forefront of the discussion over Spirit Airline’s deleterious customer service.
Image provided by Julie Fletcher, Orlando Sentinel / August 23, 2007
Thanks for joining in, as well as the kind words, John!
This whole experience is certainly a case study on modern customer service. For years, companies could count on customers not having a voice. The attraction of a low price far outweighed what little negative word of mouth might exist.
In this situation, things are much more amplified. Spirit still may grow faster than the message spreads, and that’s okay, but I know that all of us over on that blog post have helped save a lot of folks some serious headache. Much more than we would have been able to do offline, for sure.
Viva la internet
Well, from the beginning of Spirit’s time, I was a fan…Nonstop. cheap flights from Michigan to Florida for vacation and just about the only nonstop flight from L.A. (where I now reside) to Michigan (hometown)… Thought I was getting a great deal until I truly was “nickel and dimed” to the same exact price, or over, the competetor’s rates. If it weren’t for the nice rep at LAX who switched my flight for “free” (had to pay for another seat) I would totally ban the airline! But, really, WTF is paying for baggage + seats + soda + snacks… As someone recently posted: Someone, anyone, please fix air travel!!!!