Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

On his website, Dustin Curtis writes about Mr.X, a user experience professional who was hired by American Airlines to sort out their substandard web site experience.

Dustin had complained online about AA’s website, and to his surprise, received an e-mail from Mr.X telling him about the challenges of redesigning the site for AA.

This was a mistake however. He got fired. Apparently responding to customers in a transparent way is not company policy. Shows that American Airlines isn’t too much into the whole “transparent company” and “listening to users thing.” Actually, the very fact that they fired him and thought this was gonna be without any repercussions goes to show that AA hasn’t understood that the playing field has changed: the result of the firing is that the twittersphere and blogosphere are now dissing American Airlines, but not only their substandard website, but also about firing people now people also know AA isn’t gonna do anything about it because they fire the people that could change it.

Apparently, the learning is: The social web takes care of their own. Companies that don’t get it will bleed.

Read the whole thing here.

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