Don’t avoid the hard conversation

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from Newark, New Jersey. I'm actually not supposed to be in Newark, New Jersey. For the last two days, we have boarded a plane on our way to London for a meeting that we have to get to. And for the last two days, United has canceled those flights after we've been on the plane after hours of, what I would say, “truth bending,” before they decided to cancel the flights. And so while New Jersey is a lovely place to be, it's frustrating to still be here because I have somewhere else that we need to be for a meeting. The worst part of this is that United has handled this badly. Things happen, mechanicals happen, crews time out. It's all part of travel today. Everybody understands that. But what doesn't need to happen is the lack of transparency, the lack of honesty, the lack of candor when something goes wrong. So had they immediately told us, hey, you know what, we're going to have to cancel this flight or hey, you know what, we're having a mechanical problem, and we're going to be delayed at least 3 or 4 hours. But that's not what they did. They kept stretching out the truth. They kept avoiding – they kept avoiding saying the hard thing that had to be said because they knew people were going to be upset. Well guess what? By the time they actually had to say the hard thing, people were far more upset than they would have been if they had been honest with us in the beginning.

It's a great lesson for us. Things go wrong. Jobs don't get done on time. There's a mistake or, we misunderstand something that a client said. We're human beings. We're going to make mistakes. But how we handle that mistake is how we leave the client feeling about the agency and our brand. Right now, I'm not feeling great about the United brand, and I love them. And I have been loyal to them for years. But I'm mad at how they've handled this. And so now I have distrust, and now I'm thinking about maybe we should think about aligning with another airline. None of that would have happened. None of those feelings would have happened if they had just been honest. Same end result. We still would have been in new Jersey for two extra days because of canceled flights. Nothing would have changed other than our attitude about the situation and our attitude about the brand. So one of the best skills that your account people and other client facing folks need to have is the ability to face bad news, hard news, mistakes with clients, with candor and with honesty and as upfront as possible.

We have to know that the relationship is much bigger than whatever the situation is in the moment, and we have to take care of the relationship first and the situation second. And by doing that with respect to the audience, with understanding that we're going to disappoint them or frustrate them or make them mad. And our job is to do that as kindly and as early as possible with respect, and treating them like a grown up. That's what saves the day. Sooner or later we will get to London, and sooner or later we will have a decision to make about whether or not we keep flying United and they have not done themselves any favors. So let's make sure in our agencies, when there are problems – because they're bound to be – that we handle them with grace, we handle them with respect, and we handle them with candor so that we don't damage the relationship much deeper than the situation calls for. Okay? All right. See you next week. Hopefully not from Jersey.