By Madhu Unnikrishnan
AviationWeek.com
A passenger on a flight notices his reading lamp is broken, so,
using his mobile device, he complains on Twitter. Within minutes, the
airline’s ground staff has dispatched a flight attendant to fix the
problem and has alerted maintenance at the destination airport.
Corporate communications has passed the Tweet onto the customer service
department, which contacts the passenger to apologize for the
inconvenience.
This scenario is not science
fiction. It, or one similar to it, happens every day in airline cabins
as tech-savvy passengers use social media tools to disperse information
among their networks. Are airlines ready for this new world?
Although
most of the industry is engaged online to some extent, there remains a
lingering notion among a number of legacy airlines that social media
is, to quote one senior executive, “just a silly fad.” Perceptions like
these are reinforced by the fact that social media has yet to make a
measurable impact on the bottom line of any carriers. But airlines such
as JetBlue Airways and Virgin America are betting that their
investments of time and resources in social media will pay off in the
not-too-distant future.
While social media
continues to evolve and the tools used to reach an engaged online
community may change, the paradigm shift in customer habits is here to
stay, say media analysts and airlines that have bought into the
concept. “Shame on those airlines who think they can ignore this and
that it will go away,” says Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst
with Forrester Research.
JetBlue has more than 1.4
million followers on Twitter, the micro-blogging site that allows users
to update their networks in 140-character posts, called “Tweets.” That
is more than any other airline, and among the higher number of
followers of any corporation. JetBlue’s attention to social media
requires significant resources. A team of six in the corporate
communications department monitors the feed until the last passenger
has left the last airport each day, says Morgan Johnston, manager of
corporate communications.
JetBlue cannot point to a
direct financial benefit from its social media, but company managers
see a payoff in two areas that ultimately impact profits, customer
satisfaction and brand loyalty. “The utility is not what it does to the
bottom line but how it works as a marketing tool,” says Marty St.
George, senior vice president of marketing and commercial strategy.
“Real-time customer feedback is a gift.”
The
airline’s vast Twitter following and its growing presence on Facebook
serve as excellent market research, says St. George. JetBlue focuses
its energy online to listening to what its customers are saying about
the company, and, when appropriate, steps in to resolve
customer-service issues. Responding to demand, it also has set up a
second Twitter feed to promote fare sales.
But
succeeding in social media requires allowing customer control of the
message, at least to a certain degree. While that is difficult for most
companies, it should not be an excuse to ignore social media, says
Harteveldt. “Guess what—your brand is being discussed online anyway,”
he argues. Bad messages now have the ability to go viral to thousands,
even millions, of people in cyberspace.
A case in
point is a video posted to YouTube by musician Dave Carroll about his
eight-month struggle to get compensation from United Airlines for a
damaged guitar. The battle turned into a public relations nightmare for
the carrier, as the video of Carroll’s song, “United Breaks Guitars,”
was viewed more than 6.6 million times. That led to his story being
picked up by major television news outlets. He even was called to
Washington last year to testify at a congressional hearing on passenger
rights.
United eventually offered Carroll
compensation, but the episode underscored the need for airlines to be
engaged with the online community and to step in quickly when an issue
arises. “With social media, the airline has an opportunity to be part
of the conversation,” Harteveldt says.
Virgin America sees online communities as a “natural extension of
our brand,” says Abby Lunardini, director of corporate communications
and leader of the airline’s social media effort. But the carrier puts
an emphasis on listening to what customers are saying about Virgin
America and fostering conversations about the brand. “We don’t want to
make Twitter a marketing spam channel,” says Lunardini. However, the
airline is moving some advertising and marketing dollars from
traditional outlets to social media channels.
Virgin
America’s fleet-wide Wi-Fi brought the urgency of connecting with
passengers through social media into sharper focus. The airline
receives more than 350 direct messages on Twitter on an average day,
and customers regularly comment on service and delays on Facebook
during a flight. “There is no point being on social media unless you
can be responsive in real time,” Lunardini says. “You have to be able
to cede a little control to be in this space. We let people talk about
the good and the bad, because people won’t engage unless it’s a real
conversation.”
While the approach has its risks,
there are also rewards. “Facebook pages allow airlines to listen and
respond to people’s feedback, which allows companies to build brand
loyalty,” says Tom Arrix, Facebook’s vice president of U.S. sales.
In
Europe, Virgin Atlantic observed that media sites were driving more
traffic to corporate web sites and wanted a part of the action, says
Allison Wightman, head of the airline’s e-business. But once the
interaction on social media sites began, the U.K.-based carrier found
there was also an opportunity to interact with current and potential
customers to reinforce the brand image.
The effort
did not come without bumps. Virgin Atlantic explored several approaches
as it sought to quantify exactly what benefits its social media
strategies reaped. “The learning curve is very steep,” Wightman says.
Search remains the primary objective. Wightman hopes social media
ventures eventually will drive 25% of the traffic to the Virgin
Atlantic web site.
Alaska Airlines also uses social
media to drive traffic to its web site. The carrier has no booking
facility on its Facebook page, but it relies on “brand advocates” to
interact to drive traffic back to the site, says Andrea Schwarzenbach,
manager of interactive marketing. The airline steps in to correct
misinformation, but other than that, it lets customers talk freely on
Facebook, she says.
Alaska saw a 32% spike in
traffic to its web site earlier this year after running a “mystery fare
sale” on Twitter, underscoring the power of viral messaging. “We
watched the buzz in the Twitter stream, and that’s when we saw the
value of Twitter,” Schwarzenbach says.
What Alaska
stumbled onto was a fundamental shift in the way consumers react to
advertising messages. “People are no longer going buy the brand because
the brand tells them to,” says Ludo Van Vooren, a consultant who blogs
about airlines and aerospace. “People buy the brand because all their
friends are telling them to.” Indeed, a Forrester research study found
that 27% of travelers use Facebook for planning their trips because
they can share ideas with friends.
Southwest
Airlines, which has long had a new media presence through its blog
“Nuts About Southwest,” learned the value of social media tools last
July, when it announced a two-day fare sale through Twitter instead of
taking the paid-advertising route. The promotion resulted in the two
highest traffic days on Southwest’s web site—and the top two revenue
days in the airline’s history. Those records were broken again when a
repeat Twitter sale was held in October. “It’s not just sheer volume,
but the trend,” says Paula Berg, manager of emerging media. “It’s
setting records.”
Legacy network carriers have been slower to adopt social media tools.
“They study it, they’re talking about it, but they’re not acting on
it,” says Forrester’s Harteveldt. “The legacies have been caught
blindsided,” just as they were with online bookings in the 1990s.
United
Airlines is a case in point, even after the incident with Dave Carroll.
The airline has a Twitter presence, which it uses to advertise fare
sales called “Twares” that are handled by its revenue management
department. But when it comes to online engagement, United prefers a
more controlled approach. It has an invitation-only online community,
“1K,” for passengers who have flown more than 100,000 mi. a year.
“We
use this group for research and to get feedback on potential new
products,” says Robin Urbanski, an employee who helps to mold the
carrier’s social media strategy. The 1K community serves as a focus
group for the airline, she says, and members are given monthly access
to the carrier’s senior executives.
Delta Air Lines
is still “evaluating additional opportunities” in social media, says
Susan West, an airline representative. Delta broadcasts video on
YouTube and maintains Facebook fan pages to promote marketing messages.
But in terms of active engagement with the community, the airline is
taking a wait-and-see approach and is still developing a comprehensive
social media strategy, West says.
And while big
brand European airlines have embraced various online tools—KLM and
British Airways, for instance, maintain Twitter accounts—there remains
a lot of skepticism on the value of social media. “It’s hype,” says
Frank Seedorff, head of e-commerce at Condor. He argues that most
social media exercises draw far too few hits to warrant the personnel
costs associated with maintaining them. “We don’t have the money to pay
the folks.” Only when a social media system breaks the 250,000 regular
viewers level does it start to become interesting, he says, noting that
search engines such as Yahoo and Google are driving traffic to Condor’s
web site, not social media.
But Julian Carr,
commercial director for BMI Baby, recently noted that establishing a
presence in the social networking environment is critical, since
bloggers are starting to gain traction. The airline maintains a Twitter
account, although he says the primary target is travel media, not the
general public.
US Airways’ management team learned
of the value of Twitter after the crash landing of Flight 1549 in the
Hudson River in January 2009, when news of the accident spread across
the world in a matter of minutes via Twitter.
The
airline typically has not done much direct-to-consumer marketing, so it
does not yet advertise fare sales on Twitter, although the marketing
team is studying that venue, says Morgan Durrant, a member of the
carrier’s Twitter team. US Airways launched two feeds in October, one
for employees and one to promote news about the airline to the public.
US
Airways is not yet on Facebook, although the corporate communications
department has “talked a lot about it.” Durrant says it is a luxury the
carrier simply cannot afford in today’s dismal airline industry
environment.
“Facebook requires more time
investment, and we don’t think we can do it well, given the size of our
staff,” he says. “We’re a lean-and-mean team, and Twitter is a better
fit for us.”
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