Changing Airline Customer Service Using Social Media
Musician Dave Carroll highlighted his airline woes with a YouTube video titled 'United Breaks Guitars.'
I am not the only one who has had a terrible airline experience and gotten trapped in the airline customer service no mans land. Thanks to social media, times are changing! Airlines are using social media to manage their reputation, deal with customer complaints and increase revenues.
The Wall Street Journal had a great article on this groups trend. Let’s look at a few examples:
- Delta Airlines customer service agents hunt for issues online and even bend the airlines rules in dealing with them.
- Agents are rebooking passengers while they are inflight (since they can use social media from 35,000 feet)
- Booking tickets or awarding miles for people who are complaining via social media
- 24/7 Twitter monitoring
Airlines are looking to solve problems and engage in the dialog happening on social media. This is a great case study for your business.
I challenge you to ask yourself what conversations are happening about you or your industry that you could participate in and how can you incorporate social media into your communication strategy.
The way people communicates has changed and as communicators, we need to change as well.
Interview with Mark Zuckerberg: Web Turning into One Big Social Network
60 Minutes did an interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg. It is an interesting insight into the very influential company. Facebook has over 500 million users across the globe.
Facebook is introducing new products with what seems to be the goal of turning the entire web into one big social network. Is your company part of the social web?
Adaptability
What strikes me is Facebook’s ability to continue to evolve to keep up with user interests. For example, Mark Zuckerburg states that photos were not part of the original plan. Since people started uploading 100 million photos a day, Facebook created a better way to organize them.
The privacy question
I am the wrong person to ask about the privacy question because I don’t think anything on Facebook is private and Facebook isn’t trying to keep your information private. It is your responsibility about monitoring what information you and your company put on your Facebook page.
Facebook makes money by walking the privacy boundary. For example, JCPenny (or as my Grandmother calls it “Penny’s”) just launched a Facebook online store and guess what, they are collecting information about you and your friends.
Things we can learn from Facebook
- You will know when something resonates with your target audience (as seen by Facebook’s explosive growth)
- No matter how much your audience loves you, you must continue to evolve
- Pushing the boundaries can help to grow your business
