Grant McCracken: What Virgin Can Learn From Apple (And Three Other Thoughts On A Plane)

I was trying to charge my phone on my Virgin Atlantic flight home from London and one of the attendants descended on me to insist that I cease and desist.  I tried to explain that a cell phone was essential to meeting up with one’s car service. She didn’t care.

I thought to myself, “this is not what Apple would have done.”  Apple had the very clever idea of turning a moment of customer unhappiness into an exercise in the Apple way.  So we enter the Apple store with our wounded iPhone braced for an unpleasant, accusatory, uncooperative engagement with the “support” staff, and lo and behold, the Apple people actually seem to want to help, to shoulder more than their share of the responsibility to put things right, and then to send us on our way with a song in our heart.  Steve Jobs has found a way to colonize and convert the misery inflected on us by product malfunction.  So simple, so smart, and actually not very difficult.

Virgin Atlantic has not got the news.  They have an unreasonable policy.  (The adapter I was not allowed to use to charge my iPhone was perfectly ok to run my ThinkPad.)  This policy has been seized upon by a staff member as an opportunity to play “big nurse.”  (How frustrating for a corporation when a member of the corporation uses their power for personal purposes in this way.)  And when I pled my case, she just got worse.  And Virgin looked still more heartless and unreasonable.

You kill yourself to build a brand, and this happens.  Natalie could have found a way to give me an extra 5 minutes of charge.  ”Our little secret” and “this is an exception I make only for you” would have augmented the brand wonderfully.  But no.  Natalie was triumphant. And damn the brand.

Everything else about the VA experience, I have to say, was really pretty well done.  I recommend it.  (Just be careful to avoid you know who.)

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