Yesterday I wrote about how social media has benefitted passengers on airlines (sometimes at the expense of the airlines). Today I’m writing about the benefits to the airlines.
Let’s start with complaints, because yesterday’s post dealt a lot with that. Social media give travelers a chance to immediately complain about something. But they also give the airlines a chance to immediately respond.
Like, say, when the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud closed down airports in Europe for six days in April 2010. There were plenty of salty and/or distressed travelers tweeting on their airlines’ Twitter accounts.
According to Forbes, that was when KLM Royal Dutch Airlines decided to ramp up its dabbling in social media and went all in. The company decided to make social media its customer-service front line.
In the last year, KLM has defined new social media job roles, reorganized marketing and services and created a social media hub, according to Forbes.
By doing so, the airline is able to respond to customer concerns in as little as an hour. It can use Facebook and Twitter as its main marketing and service communication tool, which centralizes things.
Other airlines have made similar changes, such as Delta Airlines, Southwest and JetBlue.
Southwest has a blog (Nuts About Southwest) that the company uses to connect with customers. According to SocialMediaExaminer.com, a team of 30 bloggers contributes to the site—news and behind-the-scenes stories, in particular.
Southwest, like a lot of other airlines, uses Facebook for community conversations, streaming videos and ticket deals, according to SocialMediaExaminer.com.
So in the battle between passengers and airlines, there’s no real winner. Maybe there’s no real battle. In fact, it’s more like they’re both making out pretty well by using social media.
It’s not a surprise, really. Social media seems to be helping everyone these days.
