Actions speak louder than words

A twitter in Japan enquired both Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways about donating miles for Haiti relief on January 24 2010. JAL and ANA gave him two completely different answers. Below are the responses translated to English to the best of my (I meant google's) knowledge.

JAL: "We don't have such a service" (そのようなサービスはございません)
ANA: "We had the mile donation campaign for Sichuan earthquake due to overwhelming requests from our customers. We will forward your request to the department responsible immediately for review" (過去にもお客様ご要望で四川大地震などで臨時対応したことがあり、早速担当部署に検討させます」)

To be honest, the one from ANA sounds much nicer than JAL's "cruel" response. JAL just told that guy a flat out "no" without even telling him they will review his request. On the other hand, ANA's reply sounds more friendly and makes people feel that they will seriously consider his request.

So he posted this on his twitter account (I believe this is the guy, but I could be wrong). Somehow a famous Japanese musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto, twitted about this too and therefore the news spread. There were overwhelming supports from the twitter community requesting for this service. A day later, JAL announced for the Haiti relief mile donation campaign! An ANA? Nothing. At least I am not aware of they have a similar campaign at the moment.

JAL received the World Savers Award for a reason. And now I have one more reason to call ANA the dark side LOL. Even a bankrupted airlines knows their social responsibility and launched a donation campaign. And how about ANA? Where is your support? Didn't you say you launched the Sichuan campaign because of the large number of requests from customers? So give us a number, I am sure they can gather enough support within days!

ANA might have better representatives who know how to sugar coat their words and JAL should have trained theirs better. But you know what, it's the action that matters! Now only if JAL can response to the market as quick as this :) And ANA thanks for your cooperation once again. You have just damaged your brand image. By the way, thanks for delaying your new cabins rollout and removing Premium Economy seats in the new 777-300ER. I like you more every day :)

Speaking of Twitter, I have started using my twitter account. You can follow me here :)

Source: iza.ne.jp via Yahoo! (in Japanese)

Related Posts:
Donate your JMB miles for Haiti relief
JAL is a World Saver (i.e. Save JAL Save the World LOL)
Thanks for your cooperation, ANA :)