{"id":1270,"date":"2019-08-07T15:02:50","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T14:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/?p=1270"},"modified":"2019-08-07T15:04:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T14:04:42","slug":"easyjet-fly-by-seat-of-their-pants-in-pr-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/easyjet-fly-by-seat-of-their-pants-in-pr-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"EasyJet fly by seat of their pants in PR fail"},"content":{"rendered":"

EasyJet’s mishandling of the backless seat fiasco<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0demonstrates how quickly\u00a0a brand can\u00a0lose control of its reputation online \u2013 even if the company\u00a0is\u00a0in the right.<\/p>\n

Such was the airline’s\u00a0ineptitude, they themselves contributed to the social and mainstream media\u00a0spread of a photo taken by a passenger on one of their planes showing a traveller sitting in a broken seat that had no back.<\/p>\n

The take-home message for businesses that use platforms such as Twitter (in this case) and Facebook is that in a media-savvy world, staff need to be trained to develop a “nose for bad news”.<\/p>\n

And the airline’s media meltdown looks like it can put down to a lack of investment in learning programmes for\u00a0staff who\u00a0are strangers to a fast-moving news landscape in which almost every member of the public\u00a0has the potential to be an “action news” reporter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The wildfire started spreading yesterday morning (6\/8\/19) when Twitter user Matthew Harris Tweeted a photo of a woman passenger sitting on a seat with no back aboard\u00a0an EasyJet plane that was bound from Luton to Geneva.<\/p>\n

“How can this be allowed?” he asked. In of itself, it was enough to attract some attention in the Twittersphere.<\/p>\n

But then came the moment of madness.<\/p>\n

Fat was poured right on to the flames as an EasyJet customer service employee responded: “Hi Matthew, thanks for bringing this to our attention. Before we can investigate this could I ask you to remove the photograph & then DM us more info regarding this, so we can best assist you.”<\/p>\n

“Absolutely not,” Matthew responded.<\/p>\n

And so\u00a0thousands of Twitter users \u2013 suspecting that EasyJet had something to hide \u2013 began\u00a0Retweeting Matthew’s message, its accompanying photo and EasyJet’s attempts to cover it all up.<\/p>\n

Then newspapers, radio and television picked up the story as it jumped the firebreak between social and mainstream outlets.<\/p>\n

The employee had followed the “golden rule” instruction given to customer service staff by\u00a0social media training<\/strong><\/a> “experts” that when confronted by a disgruntled member of the public \u2013 “respond online, resolve offline”.<\/p>\n

That’s reasonable\u00a0advice that ordinarily calms inflamed situations \u2013 except it had the opposite effect here.<\/p>\n

At the centre of this perfect storm\u00a0of Tweets, Likes, Retweets and hashtags, the\u00a0truth became\u00a0lost \u2013 that EasyJet would never allow a jet to fly with a passenger propped on the edge of a broken seat.<\/p>\n

The seat was, in fact, out of commission, and the woman had been\u00a0put there temporarily while another one was found for her prior to take-off.<\/p>\n

EasyJet did all they could to make it clear that she was sitting there only while other travellers were boarding\u00a0but the damage had been done.<\/p>\n

This proves that a lie can go viral quicker than the truth. That’s not to say that the Tweeter was not being honest; he was sincere. But\u00a0he didn\u2019t quite portray the reality in its entirety.<\/p>\n

He also tapped into the sentiment currently doing the rounds that airlines like EasyJet, Ryanair and other such budget brands aren\u2019t very well liked.<\/p>\n

Media House International’s social media expert said: “EasyJet tried to control the affair by asking Matthew\u00a0to take his\u00a0Tweet down but that\u2019s probably the silliest thing any brand can do.<\/p>\n

“As soon as you do that, you upset the author by triggering writer\u2019s indignation, which is what happened.<\/p>\n

“We can\u2019t blame the airline employee who Tweeted. It\u2019s their line manager who\u2019s responsible for not training them properly.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s like answering the phone in a complaints department and then telling the customer not to complain \u2013 the only problem being that everyone can hear you.<\/p>\n

“I know that companies aren\u2019t spending enough on training staff\u00a0in the art of social media use.<\/p>\n

“EasyJet\u00a0should have\u00a0handled the matter\u00a0with a bit more humour and less defensively \u2013 not to make light of it but to highlight the brand guidelines of the company\u00a0and to make sure that everyone knows in no uncertain terms that the aircraft would never have taken off like that.<\/p>\n

“By saying ‘please take this down and have a chat with us in a place a bit more safe’ implies that there was a real danger.<\/p>\n

“The golden rule is to make sure you listen to your customers and do it in an open environment and in a very open and honest way. Sadly, EasyJet\u00a0failed at all those things.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EasyJet’s mishandling of the backless seat fiasco\u00a0demonstrates how quickly\u00a0a brand can\u00a0lose control of its reputation online \u2013 even if the company\u00a0is\u00a0in the right. Such was the airline’s\u00a0ineptitude, they themselves contributed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1275,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions\/1275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}