Today’s post has some highly suggested, but not required reading.
Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent wrote a blog post yesterday called: The Most Influential Thing a Company can Do to Increase Customer Advocacy. She specifically highlights the airline industry at one point.
Following that I came across a post in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal called The Airlines’ Squeaky Wheels Turn to Twitter. Apparently some airlines are now listening to the conversations taking place on Twitter.
Which brings me to today’s post.
Listening on the Social Web
Some of you may remember my little spat with US Airways, I wrote a two part series called A Living Social Media Case Study – USAirways – Are they Listening?
It turns out they were barely listening, continually reiterating that “they don’t normally do this sort of thing” and “we don’t have the staff to support customer service on Twitter.”
They even proudly display it on their Twitter bio:
Customer-Focused?
So US Airways seems to think that the most effective way to deliver a better customer experience is to do it on their terms, so it’s more convenient for them, at least that’s my guess as to why they choose to do it this way.
We, the customers, should not get to choose where we vent our frustrations, complaints or concerns. We should not be met halfway, we should come to them. If we want better customer service, there’s a site for that and I’m sure it’s just as easy as posting one or several 140 character messages to our network, right?
Here’s the form:
If not for Autofill, I think this form would take much more time than it would to tell me network to avoid US Airways at all costs through tweets. By taking this route, US Airways is essentially saying, “hey, you, very angry customer, instead of publicly telling people about how we screwed up, can you please come to our walled garden and fill out this lengthy form?” How is this any different from saying call our customer service number? Why not just provide a generic email address like [email protected]?
If we wanted an automated menu system, followed by waiting on hold, then being transferred to three people we would do that. If we wanted to simply get a few coupons to ride on an airline that we already can’t stand, we’d fill out the form. Whether they like it or not people go to Twitter and blogs and public complaint forums. There is no accountability in a feedback form on the US Airways website. They can create 600 different variations on their form, people are still going to complain on Twitter.
An opportunity for work, an opportunity to improve customer service
- People are talking about brands.
- People are talking about competitors.
- People are talking about industries.
- People are happy, people are sad.
The majority of companies still haven’t put someone in charge of listening. The majority of industries still have either no presence or an ineffective presence in Social Media. Most Fortune 500 CEOs are spending time in trade publications and ignoring the opportunity to talk directly to their customers. Unemployment is rampant yet there is a potential for thousands of jobs; they just haven’t been created yet.
This isn’t just money out of pocket for companies to make customers happy, it’s a revenue opportunity.
For example, RightNow calculated that the US airline industry could make an additional $10.6 billion in revenue this year if they could guarantee a superior customer experience [based upon US Airline revenue by the BTS].
If every company listened online for what people were saying and had people qualified to respond on behalf of the brand, at least some of the currently 9.6% that are unemploymed could find work. At the same time, companies can begin to recover some of the customers they lose by not being a part of the conversations that are happening.