Companies have many different ways to communicate with customers: the web, a blog, and the message they hear while on hold. Matt at Signal vs. Noise concludes that JetBlue didn’t use any of those means to communicate with customers. Instead, it was the guy with the megaphone standing at the terminal who had the most information.

However, I just checked the JetBlue site and there is now a YouTube video from CEO David Neeleman linked from the homepage.

It’s not just that companies need to be proactive in their communications, but they also need to be able to respond quickly when something goes wrong. They need a failover communication plan.

It would make an interesting article to examine how different companies respond to problems like these….what language is used, how quickly they respond, what mediums they use, and to what effect.