Thursday, July 20, 2017
Last weekend, media personality Ann Coulter took to Twitter to let the world know about an incident she experienced on Delta Airlines.
We are now used to Twitter being used as a medium to inform, to rant, and to raise customer service issues. Everyone from the President to celebrities to ordinary citizens will tweet about what's on their mind at the moment.
But this was different. No one was dragged off an airplane. No one was denied boarding when they purchased a seat. Instead, Coulter was moved to a different seat within the same row, a seat for which she had paid a minor upgrade fee ($30) just the day before. As a result, she tweeted her outrage at both the airline and its employees, as well as her fellow passengers nearly three dozen times.
Delta, to its credit, refused to play ball. They refunded her ticket fee, but criticized her posting, saying they were disappointed and they found her actions "unnecessary and unacceptable." Coulter responded by saying it cost $10K of her time to research the flight and choose the correct seat option. Gee, for that amount of money, she could have hired an assistant to handle this task--or better yet, flown first class and had money leftover.
The Internet is enduring, not endearing. What image will you leave with customers and prospects when you or someone else in your organization tweets in an emotional moment? Long after the actual incident is forgotten, will the world remember your tantrum instead?
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