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It’s something that can happen to any popular website that receives a lot of traffic – it can crash. But try to explain that to unsatisfied customers…

Domestic airline Kulula witnessed this first hand after a Spring Sale promotion caused the Kulula website to crash.

We used our reputation management tool, saidWot, to conduct an online reputation audit in order to determine the damage done on this particular day – 1 September 2009 – Kulula Spring Day Sale.



Conclusion
The above results prove that the website crash had a significant effect on the reputation of Kulula.com online. Most of the coverage received was negative. If you consider the potential loss in term of Rand Value taking into account the amount of negative mentions Kululu was more than R90 000 out of pocket on the day and this only takes into account the disgruntled users who bothered to vent online, the multiplier effect is much larger.

Online reputation management is critical for every organisation. Had Kulula.com been aware of the website crash sooner, they could have reacted and helped their customer by providing an alternative solution. Unfortunately, the negative conversation spiraled out of control and Kulula.com lost a lot of business that day. Business that went to the opposition as not only were people upset but they were recommending Mango and 1Time sites as easier booking channels at the same prices!