Southwest Airlines cancelled over 16,000 flights throughout this past holiday, leaving hundreds of passengers, crew, planes, and luggage stranded across the country. While Storm Elliott was partially to blame for flight cancellations and delays, Southwest Airlines was not prepared for the issue. How many travelers will trust Southwest next winter? According to Melissa Agnes’s “Crisis Ready: How To Build An Invincible Brand”, being crisis ready may have kept the airline’s crisis on the tarmac.
Melissa Agnes is a crisis management expert that defines being ‘Crisis Ready Today’ as an entire organization instinctively understanding how to detect a risk or threat, and know in the heat of a moment how to look at the risk/threat and assess potential impact on the organization. The organization must respond in a way that does not just manage the situation, but manages the situation in a way that increases stakeholder trust in the brand. Agnes provides three essential steps to take that will make a brand invincible. These are the three steps Southwest Airlines needed to take to keep their recent crisis from taking flight.
- Understand what an issue is vs a crisis for your brand.
An issue for a brand is a negative event, but will not stop business or require immediate decision making from leadership. A crisis is a negative event that will stop business as usual to some extent, and will require immediate decision making from leadership. A crisis threatens long-term negative impact on people, business operations, and/or brand reputation. An issue may go viral, but not amount to crisis level. For Southwest Airlines, Storm Elliott was an issue quickly turned to crisis.
With thousands of passengers missing out on spending the holiday with loved ones, being able to go home, or simply escaping the cold, the Southwest situation quickly went viral. Of course, a winter storm means flight cancellations and delays. However, Southwest Airlines continued to cancel thousands of trips after the pass of Storm Elliott, leaving stakeholders angry with the brand, and dissolving trust in the airline. Southwest Airlines heavily lacked in communication with stakeholders, making the situation seem like a mere issue to the brand. However, the airline was now in the hot-seat on news stations and social media. It was a crisis.
- Take the previous definitions, and consider worst case scenarios.
Agnes states, “in order to be crisis ready, we need to be in a position to prevent the preventable and prepare for the unpreventable.” Every organization has a series of high risk/impact situations that they are the most susceptible and vulnerable to. Airline travel is highly likely to be impacted by bad weather. Storm Elliott was a nationwide natural event that we held insight on multiple days before it hit. We cannot prevent a storm, but we can prepare for it.
Southwest Airlines sent no warning information before the storm, and extremely little information during. Passengers could open the app and see a “your flight may be impacted” warning, and that was all. Even after the storm had passed, thousands of flights were still being cancelled and some delayed with little to no communication. To stakeholders, it looked as though Southwest Airlines had no preparation with no plan on how to turn the tables and get their passengers and crew to their destinations. With better planning on top of better communication with it’s stakeholders, Southwest Airlines could have prevented this issue from developing into a brand-wide crisis.
- Take a 360° view of your stakeholders.
Crisis management has always been about people, and putting people above process and bottom line. An organization must fully understand their stakeholder’s expectations and how to meet them… Who are your stakeholders? How will they feel? How can you put measures in place to meet those expectations, in real-time? Southwest prides themselves on their unmatched service and hospitality. Yet, the airline left its stakeholders uninformed and stranded days after Storm Elliott had passed. Stakeholders needed communication, assurance, and to be seen.
Agnes defines the Crisis Ready Rule as “the longer we take to respond to a crisis, the more of a crisis response penalty the brand suffers and the more we lose control we lose over the narrative of our own story.” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan stayed silent until January 3rd, after travel issues were sorted out. Although better than nothing, the situation at hand called for communication at the beginning of the crisis, not the very end.
This Southwest crisis has affected thousands throughout the holiday, and will impact how many travelers chose to fly Southwest next year. By following the three essential steps, Southwest could have avoided the crisis, and become brand invincible.
Learn more about crisis management or the Southwest crisis.
