Virgin America Knows Good Service
First and foremost, apologies for having slacked off on blogging for the past 2 weeks. Gosh, I’ve been busy being a kid!
ANYWAY, i flew Virgin America from JFK to SFO yesterday. It was my first flight with Virgin America, and they practically did everything right. I was reading a book on creating customer evangelists (for another topic) and the airline pretty much won on every point this book offered. Of course, many of those points are obvious: provide good service and create a memorable experience. It also helps not to set yourself up for complaints. Virgin only flies out of a few airports, so the logistics are much more manageable. American Airlines, on the other hand, will always have problems to worry about. In effect, they’ve set themselves up for more problems and more spending because of the massive growth into markets that Virgin or Southwest wouldn’t dare touch.
However, Virgin could improve: I wrote about them about a month ago, and no representative contacted me or commented on my blog to note my existence. Many companies are being smart by tapping into internet conversations – take for example our friends at Serverbeach.com. Within an hour after I wrote a complaint about their downtime, a company official commented on my blog. Now THATS how you create loyal customer evangelists!
Virgin is still young and learning how to manage itself as an airline, but they’re doing almost everything right. Next time you fly, go with Virgin! And once you fly with them, you too will become a customer evangelist 
Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She’s currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I concur with the views on this post. Companies should spend more time improving their image. People complain a lot and what I learned is that the customer is always right. Something ticked them off and now they are venting. So what can companies do? Well reacting to the comment is the first step. While Serverbeach is a tech a company, every company in any industry should take the proper steps to respond to customer’s complaints in a professional and courteous manner. Doing it sooner than later is the best way to go and in your case, Serverbeach won your respect by 1 hour turn around.
Take for instance, the American President, he receives a report that outlines the current state of events that happen overnight, every morning. Every company should have an automatic report that gathers from the web through news, blog, and search feeds on what people are saying positively or negatively about their company. Many large bay area companies have teams dedicated to the sole purpose of mining this information.
If companies’ reps took the time to respond publicly, it’ll boost any company’s credibility and image and convert future leads into loyal customers.
January 30th, 2010 at 10:31 am
I agree that Virgin America a more pleasurable flying experience than most other airlines but they really need to work on the service for their frequent fliers.
I was very surprised when I logged onto their website and could not change a frequent flier mile flight as most airlines allows their customers to do. I saw a note on the website that said I had to call to change the flight for $75 fee. I then called, was on hold for a while, and then was told that I can only cancel the flight, not reschedule, which conflicted with the verbiage on their website. I was informed that I might have to wait seven business days for my points to be placed back in my account (not the norm for other airlines) and that I would then have to book a separate ticket. This kind of inflexible system does not engender loyalty.
Lastly, I have written several times to them via their website with both positive and negative comments and have never received a response. They may have pretty lights, more legroom, decent food, and fun inter-active screens on their flights, but that will only get them so far.