So while my first post was really about empowering your ground-level employees to avoid bad customer experiences, whether they go viral or not, Delta has turned this into a great example of how you should handle social incidents.

While nothing can erase the negative impact this will leave, Delta’s social [and business] teams have been on their toes and acting quick to avoid making this into a “United Airlines Breaks Guitar” hit. Sure the PR will continue against them, more articles will come, it won’t be good but for an organization of this site and legacy, they’re playing their cards well. Let’s take a look…

1. Yesterday a video was posted about an issue costing 38 soldiers $2800 in fees. As quick as the video became shared, Delta was in the mix with a response from “Rachel” apologizing & reaffirming the policy just before midnight EST.
2. This morning Delta wakes up to see it’s full-blown-viral with major social network and media coverage creating over 200,000 YouTube views.
3. By 1pm EST Rachel has an updated post with an updated policy: 4 checked bags for military traveling in economy on orders. The post reaffirms Delta’s involvement & programs for the military. And Rachel also threw in a personal statement as an Army wife and 12 year employee of Delta.

It’s been less than 24 hours and Delta has out two blog posts, has changed a world-wide policy and has allowed a personal message to float into the middle of it.

Like I said, this won’t end the problem and frankly, adjusting one policy does not fix the underlying issue where the system often prevents employee from making the “right” decision but Delta has taken a strong step to mitigating the issue and, more importantly, having a voice in the spread of it every step of the way.

By moving quickly blogs, tweets, mainstream media are all adjusting their story to mention Delta’s response and changes while the story is hot. As hard as it is, this is critical and very well executed by Delta… The longer you wait, the colder the issue and the less your response is seen so, from a social crises management perspective, kudos to their social team for being on top of the video, their business for being flexible enough to run and make a decision when one needed to be made — even if it’s just one gesture it’s a big one at the right time.

For more thoughts on crises communication management in a social world, check out my previous post about the Urban Outfitters social media incident.

But this isn’t just about Delta. It’s about how we as “corporate” set policies that potentially lock thousands of our employees into a position where they are forced to do things that get our brand to the front page of major news outlets in a social media disaster.

Without a little trust and room for flexibility, your employees can become your enemies.

Now that’s not to say Delta was wrong here. As they’re social team said in their response [good job being upfront on this on Delta, apologizing and publishing your facts]: they’ve got an agreement and a policy and have to think about scale. Similarly, just because someone has a video camera or threatens to blog or tweet or cause you negative PR, that doesn’t mean you should bend the rules in the least. When I hear about PR or Social activity as a threat my reaction is always to follow the letter of the rule… but what if the rule is bad? What if the video camera isn’t a threat but capturing a policy that reflects a brand who doesn’t get it? Can your employees act to do the right thing?

Airlines are an easy example because things so often go wrong, both in and out of their control. Rough for their social media managers, good for blogging on.

I can recall one instance where a flight I was going to take was clearly going to be rerouted [the airline we were going too closes at 11pm night, at 10 we hadn’t taken off]. When I suggested they call the shuttles in advance, the response was a very friendly, very polite: we’re not allowed… The rest of the line was irrelevant: good, smart employees without power may as well be replaced with… well kiosks.

This doesn’t end with bending rules either. How about creation? Just last night I was talking with a good friend about his job managing a profitable store in the retail service sector and what digital could do for them. Here you have a smart, dedicated manager looking push his brand forward and yet he’s afraid that growing the business will actually hurt him. Again there’s nothing wrong with corporate setting digital or social policies, running programs and centralizing – that’s a good thing. But when the supervising store manager has been given no social program, no idea who to contact about one and is fearful of just trying things, you’re losing opportunity.

We’ve all got bottom lines and scale to think about but sometimes the decision made at 30,000 feet doesn’t reflect what’s necessary right on the ground. Sometimes the desire to get all of the experts in a room and talk over the corporate strategy is stifling the local branch that is ready to act now and doesn’t know if they can.

It boils down to simple thing: trust. We ask a lot of our employees but don’t want to trust them with discretion and whether it’s the frontpage of one of the world’s largest news outlets or just an upset customer who tells their 135 Facebook friends, a lack of latitude can go a long way in hurting business.