Several months ago, when I went back to China, I chose Japan Airlines (JAL)
by accident. However, this "accident" surprised me by its super nice customer service and satisfiable arrangement during the flight. Plus, I was impressed by the incredible cautious working attitude and the amiable smile of JAL's staffs. In fact, I flew a lot and I experienced many airlines' customer services, but none of them could compare to JAL.
I was too curious so I asked one of the flight attendants why they were willing to offer customers such great service. She answered, "That's because our company treats us very well, so we treat you in the same way. In our company, employees' opinions are highly respected."
I searched information about JAL when I was back home. What surprised me more was the fact that, being the third largest airline in the world, JAL declared bankruptcy early 2010. It was Kazuo Inamori, one of the most famous entrepreneurs in Japan, saved this dying company. Kazuo Inamori believes that creating a friendly and enthusiastic internal community is the key to JAL's revival. Under Kazuo Inamori'
s management and social marketing strategy, JAL regained reputation and incredibly revived within 2 years, which has broke the Japanese record and shocked the world. "JAL went through its restructuring just as the airline industry began to realize the importance of social media, and thus became an early adopter of the technology by building up its presence at the same time anticipation grew over its IPO," says Samantha Shankman, the reporter at Skift.
Let's see how Kazuo Inamori made this miracle happened.
Firstly, similar to Best Buy's Blue Shirt Nation, which is an example in Chapter 12 of Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, Kazuo Inamori created JAL's internal community, named JAL Group, and tapped the groundswell inside the company. Before he did that, the hierarchy in JAL was extremely strict. Employees did not dare to express their opinions. What's worse, there was little communication among departments, let alone talking to managers regarding the ideas of restructuring JAL.
Just as what Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff point out in the book, "the bigger the company is, the more of a problem internal communication becomes" because information flows from up to down.
Luckily, Kazuo Inamori changed this situation by allowing and encouraging his staffs to use social media to express their thoughts, including criticisms and suggestions. This rapidly enhanced the loyalty and enthusiasm of employees in JAL. The internal community became active, and many useful suggestions appeared from staffs who worked at the front line. Kazuo Inamori knew that these employees were important people who listened to and talked to JAL's customers; they knew exactly what customers needed and wanted. In a word, the protential external groundswell were affected by these people. Thus, it was really smart for Kazuo Inamori to respect his employees.
JAL encourages its employees to participate in social media
and express their individual opinions
Secondly, Kazuo Inamori took a very important step after he energized the internal community -- he made JAL become a social media wiz among its competitors. In 2012 alone, JAL astonishingly launched 10 mobile applications one by one, while other airlines were still struggling to figure out their mobile and social engagement strategies. The groundswell were on fire after the 10 apps' launch. Kazuo Inamori knew that he succeeded. JAL gained 700,000 fans on Facebook in that year, and people were talking about JAL on every social media.
10 apps that launched in a year
Obviously, the revival of JAL is not an accident. It regains its reputation and restructures "step by step." After the two-year transformation, now, JAL becomes one of the best and most popular airlines in the world, again. I hope it has a better future.
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