The rising ubiquity of social media as a mainstream communication channel is seeing more and more brands become concerned with the representation of their image, and for very good reasons. Today social media often acts as a proxy for the customer service channels of old, but with a number of crucial differences. For starters, social media does not allow brands to quarantine complaints and queries very effectively. One negative customer experience can be easy broadcast to a much wider audience, and come with lasting consequences.
The good news is that social media is also a two-way street, which means that savvy brands can use it as a tool to build relationships and strengthen customer engagement.
Many leading airlines across the industry are starting to view social media in this light.
Over the years, many negative customer experience perceptions have plagued the airline industry. Things like delays, flight cancellations, and lost luggage have given some quite a stigma. But now listening and responding to customer posts and concerns via social media is actually allowing many to win back a great deal of customer loyalty.
Crimson Hexagon, a data analytics and social media research firm, recently released the findings of a study that detailed how leading European airlines are perceived on social media, and how often they engage with customers.
To gather the research, Crimson Hexagon specifically looked at the Twitter activity surrounding British Airways (BA), Ryanair, KLM, easyJet, and Virgin Atlantic. The research encompassed the Twitter conversations from January 2014 to March 2015.
Overall, the results found that BA saw the most activity on Twitter with almost 250,000 tweets during the study’s timeframe. Other key findings showed Ryanair had the highest level of negativity, while Virgin Atlantic and KLM had the largest percentage of positive activity.
These positive Tweets surrounding Virgin and KLM accounted for 27% of the overall Twitter conversation. However, the reasons behind each airline’s respective positive activity differed.
14% of KLM’s positive feedback was due to customer experience satisfaction and 13% was due to people simply “liking” the airline. On the other hand, only 5% of Virgin Atlantic’s positive Twitter feedback came from customer experience satisfaction. The remainder of Virgin’s feedback came from what the study defined as “general positive brand mentions.”
Additionally, the Crimson Hexagon study also looked at each airline’s “post volume.”
From February 2014 to February 2015, KLM lead all other airlines with the highest number of posts related to customer experience. KLM also most consistently responded to its Twitter followers.
When it came to deleterious perceptions, Ryanair lead the pack with 46% of its Twitter conversations noted as negative. Of these, customer service dissatisfaction totaled 29% of the social media conversation and 7% were due customer complaints regarding various add-on fees.
Overall, the cumulative posts have increased by 1516% since January 2014, which Crimson Hexagon believes to be a clear indication that these leading airlines have recognized the value in leveraging social media as a customer engagement tool.
There is still work to be done, however.
The study also stated the need for airlines to adopt a more fluid, consistent, and proactive approach to customer engagement via social media. Poor social media communications with customers can not only result in negative perceptions, but brands that do not significantly engage are also missing valuable opportunities to build and maintain customer relationships.
Simply put, the study found that engaging with customers via social media, especially in a personalized fashion, is a very effective real-time way to satisfy and retain customers.
“Social media is a great tool for strengthening and maintaining customer relationships, and more specifically, for repairing a damaged consumer’s loyalty,” Luke Moore, EMEA Sales Director at Crimson Hexagon. “Meaningful engagement with customers on social media by listening and responding to their posts is vital for airlines that want to improve customer satisfaction and retention.”
The airline industry’s engagement with social media is noticeably growing, which is a trend that brands across every industry should notice as well.