Flight path to destruction

From reputational hero to zero. Air New Zealand’s a great example of how quickly a reputation can be destroyed – and it’s only got itself to blame for the current customer backlash. It feels like only yesterday I was on an Air New Zealand flight ending with the cabin crew signing off with a humble-brag announcement that the airline had been voted airline of the year again. Aw shucks.

In May, it retained the title of New Zealand’s most reputable brand for the sixth year in the Colmar Brunton Corporate Reputation Index, with reputation based on a strong sense of purpose, good leadership, fairness and responsibility, and trust. The survey was done in December.

But in the past few weeks, its reputation has been shredded as it’s faced a backlash from customers trying to understand the muddled story about who gets refunds and credits, how and when.

So, what’s gone wrong? Communication, or lack thereof. Air New Zealand’s been largely missing in action for weeks.

It took too long to talk to its customers. So in the communication void, the story became about ‘‘Poor New Zealanders needing ticket refund money to feed their children and pay bills’’ up against ‘‘a multibillion-dollar company which has a $900 million Government loan and $700m of wage subsidy payments which wasn’t listening and helping Kiwis or, worse, wasn’t being kind’’.

Finally, last Friday, chief executive Greg Foran decided to take back control and start talking. A lengthy self-justification email about the airline’s survival plan went to stakeholders at 4.30pm and Foran fronted media.

The highly crafted email carried a video of Foran setting out the airline’s 800-day ‘‘survive, revive, thrive’’ plan.

An 800-day plan! What even is that? It’s 2.192 calendar years, if you were wondering. Customers don’t care about the airline’s 800-day plan; that’s the airline’s business to strategise behind closed doors. People want information, help, refunds or credits. In that order.

We know it’s been a terrible time for airlines. They’ve had no passengers. It’s been a terrible time for lots of businesses.

But instead of information, the company has given customers very little to work with, and they’ve had to battle to get even that.

Things aren’t going to improve much till July, it seems, when the online portal where you can see what credits you have got and use them to book flights is ready.

Throughout, it’s felt like Air New Zealand hasn’t given the public much credit – excuse the pun – for understanding the situation is bad for the airline. It seems to have missed the fact that there’s been a ‘‘we’re all in this together’’ and ‘‘team of 5 million’’ thing going on out here.

Air New Zealand could have said ‘‘we’re working on this whole refund, credit issue and, if you can give us a month, we’ll have a clearer idea of where we stand but we’ll keep you updated’’. People would have accepted it. After all, customers knew they weren’t going anywhere.

Instead, Air New Zealand’s been dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. So much for a brand all about ‘‘customer first’’ – clearly only in the good times.

The first rule of communications is you have to communicate, or people will fill the void with their own version of the truth, or just panic.

Let’s hope Friday’s email is Air New Zealand’s first step to delivering on its promise to ‘‘take care of customers better than any other airline on Earth’’ well before 800 days tick over.