Harry Winsor, an 8-year old boy from Boulder, CO. has an airplane fascination and inspires to be an airplane designer when he grows up. After mailing one of his many airplane drawings to Boeing, his dad, John Winsor was shocked when he received their reply to Harry’s drawing. Torn, he blogged and Twittered about his hard decision of whether to tell Harry about the letter, or just throw it away.
As CEO of the ad agency Victors & Spoils, he is aware of the amount of people that would see his blog, but I don’t think he imagined how powerful his blog and tweets would be. Word-of-mouth, is very successful in getting your message across. Negative word-of-mouth has indirect effects that are extremely damaging to any company’s image. Cecilia Alvarez, a Consumer Behavior Professor at the Florida International University in Miami, explains in class lectures that,
“Studies indicate that an upset customer will tell between 10 to 20 other people (direct effect). The same studies indicate that these people will tell an average of 5 others each (indirect effect).”This explains the attention Boeing’s inconsiderate response has raised in the media. Sadly, I think that this is a big reason why Boeing decided to invite the Winsor family for a VIP tour of their plant. Because they recognized the amount and speed of negative word-of-mouth customers were exposed to are tremendously dangerous to their company image.
It’s crazy how the employees at Boeing, with their high degrees, tittles, experience, and knowledge, didn’t have the common sense to see that the mailed in airplane design was clearly from an inspired child. They should have personalized the response letter to be age appropriate and sensible. Including some inspirational words and/or free gifts to keep the child inspired and motivated. Keeping the child’s feelings in mind should have been priority in their response.
Boeing is doing the right thing by understanding that they were wrong and trying to fix it. (Great example of Step #6 in the, “How to Listen to Your Customers?” link). Customer satisfaction is correlated with being profitable. If Boeing plans to stay in business for many years to come, it is in their best interest to listen to their customers and keep them happy. No matter how old they are. Hopefully this incident will teach Boeing as well as many other companies to train and develop their employees to better listen to their customers.
I don’t think that Boeing’s response will cause airlines to boycott their plane designs as a cause of the negative word-of-mouth. The issue was not life threatening, and Boeing is currently addressing the issue and correcting it. If my child wanted to mail his drawing in to a company in hopes to have it become their next design, I would definitely do it. I want to encourage my son to dream and be creative. Hopefully, this lesson is learned by all other companies, and they will start training their employees to be more customer service friendly.
