Top 5 Airlines Driving Customer Service & Crisis Management through Social Media: Nominees from the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media.

1. Best Airlines Driving Customer Service and Crisis Management through Social Media Helping airlines & airports engage travelers profitably

2. Introducing the Top 5 Nominees for 2011

3. Nominee 1 Virgin Atlantic: “Social Snow”

4. 2010 was a difficult winter for airlines! Threeseparate, major snow events in December 2010: “Snow 1” :closing of Gatwick; “Snow 2” : extended closing of Heathrow; “Snow 3”: closing of JFK and the heavy snow on the US eastern seaboard. They followed in quick succession, giving little time for planning to Virgin (as well as other airlines).

5. Virgin’s integrated communication strategy Virgin posted major updates on their website every few hours. They also handled individual queries via Facebook and Twitter. About 50,000 text messages sent over a period of a few days to alert customers about the disruption and to direct them to their website or social channels for more information.

6. HugeTwitter customer service effort during disruption! Virgin proactively broadcasted key messages to their social following as well as answering as many individual passenger questions as possible. This peaked at more than 460 tweets, 1,950 comments and posts and almost 1 million post views on Facebook up to the 19th December. The social team worked in 8 hour shifts to cover a 24*7, one-on-one response. At its peak, they were handling a Twitter response every 20-30 seconds.

7. Special chartered flight to repatriate US travellers for Christmas, FREE! Since this decision was taken hurriedly, Twitter and Facebook were used to inform stranded customers of the option. Virgin filled the plane by actively promoting the flight on Twitter for several hours. They achieved Top Tweet status resulting in filling 450 aircraft seats in 7 hours. The fully-loaded flight left on time and the customers got back to New York in time to meet their family and friends for Christmas. This was a first for any airline.

8. Evaluation Statistics from the 18-24th December 2010: 1,731,000 Post Views (impressions) on Facebook 5,900 Comments, Posts and Likes on Facebook 720 re-tweets of key passenger comms messages. 11% increase in Twitter following overnight, with negligible un-follows Great reviews from passengers Very good third party reviews e.g. the Birdsong report

9. Nominee 2 Delta Airlines: “@DeltaAssist”

10. Delta gets serious about customer service! Delta Airlines has a separate, dedicated Twitter channels to listen and respond to customers. What’s remarkable is the effort put into answering queries from almost everyone. They’re not even afraid to apologize!

11. “Thanks for doing the right thing, Delta!”

12. Great response rates! Delta’s followers and indeed number of tweets themselves have doubled in the six months from March. March 2011 Sep 2011 This is possible due to a dedicated team of about 10 people handling customer requests. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crankyflier/

13. Evaluation As seen, Delta’s Twitter channel serves 3 great purposes: To serve customer complaints and questions promptly. To let passengers know that there’s a forum for instant response where they’ll be heard. Their proactive strategy has led to great reviews and satisfied customers.

14. Nominee 3 Qantas: “Chilean Volcano Ashcloud”

15. Qantas faced their biggest disruption ever… The ash cloud from the Chilean Puyehue Cordon Caulle volcano caused a huge disruption affecting over 120,000 customers. Given the magnitude of the situation, traditional customer service channels were completely overwhelmed. Social media – especially, Twitter and Facebook – was identified as the perfect way to serve customers better. As a result, it reduced the number of calls to customer service and eased the emotional stress of Qantas customers.

16. Social media to the rescue! Updates provided through Twitter and Facebook. These channels were completely dedicated to ash cloud updates/information/responses from this date until 26 June. 3staff members were completely dedicated to leading the crisis management response, working almost 24 hours a day.

17. Safety first for Qantas! Social media was also effectively used to get a strong safety message out to customers, thereby reducing any backlash from cancelled flights. A video was created and put on YouTube and then promoted through Facebook and Twitter. It received great positive feedback. The #safetyfirsthashtag is still being used by some followers when tweeting the Qantas account.

18. Evaluation 200+ Twitter accounts created to follow updates from Qantas and/or ask questions Twitter following increased by over 68% over 16 days. Facebook fans increased by almost 20% 6,000 mentions and over 1,500 retweets during 2 weeks. Over 3 million news feed impressions for the Facebook posts relating to the ash cloud Significantly reduced the volume of calls to customer service centre

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20. Nominee 4 SAS Scandinavian: “Facebook customer service”

21. Incredible customer service through Facebook! Key features: Fast and reliable service. Most questions answered within 10 minutes. Key updates provided regularly. General as well as one-on-one responses provided. Every customer receives a response! Resulting in exceptionally happy and pleased customers.

22. Evaluation SAS’s exceptional dedication to customer service through Facebook has achieved a number of objectives: Offering a passengers a near-instant platform to have their questions/complaints answered. Drive greater engagement by keeping customers happy on Facebook and talking to them. A large, satisfied passenger base who praise SAS to their friends on Facebook.

23. Nominee 5 airAsia: “AskAirAsia”

24. Social media to the rescue again! In order to deal with growth on its network and resultant customer queries, AirAsia took a unique path to customer service without adding to its Call Centre which would have inevitably added to operational costs and subsequently higher fares. AskAirAsiais an online customer service portal, created in early 2011 to provide quality customer service to existing customers. It utilizes social media to the hilt including live chats and Twitter.

25. A holistic customer service portal! The main portal AskAirAsia.comis an FAQ portal that introduces the new “face” of AirAsia Customer Service – Lil’ Miss Red. Guests can ask her questions and are directed to a list of Search Results that show the top questions by guests related to the question asked. Guests can also get answers to questions about AirAsia, pre-flights, during flight, post-flight and even be updated on latest news. The AskAirAsia portal is available in 5 languages.

26. A large number of ways to get served! Guests who cannot find the answers they were searching for can seek further help through AskAirAsia’s social media platforms on Twitter, Weibo and Live Chat. Lil’ Miss Red is available on Twitter and Weibo (@askairasia) to quickly answer guests’ questions and feedback. For those who do not want to go on Twitter, the website offers a Live Chat session for guests who want to be attended to immediately.

27. Evaluation Lil’ Miss Red’s Twitter and Weibo Accounts, Lil’ Miss Red now have over 20,000 combined global followers. The Twitter and Weibo accounts play a double-edged role in fan acquisition on Social Media as well as providing personal assistance. This additional customer service platform provides faster responseand creates more engagement with guests by serving existing customers whilst effectively staying true to AirAsia’s low cost business model.

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