Not only is social media a great tool for consumers to hold companies accountable, it’s also a great tool for companies to see what the “buzz” is about their products. Southwest Airlines, for instance, has a six-person team responsible for monitoring and participating in social media, according to The Wall Street Journal.
I recently learned firsthand how closely companies are monitoring Twitter. To make a long story short, I booked plane tickets about seven months ago through Orbitz. My flights are jointly operated (in an arrangement I still don’t totally understand) by U.S. Airways and United Airlines. Somehow wires were crossed and two weeks before my trip home to be the maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding, I’m told my flight was re-routed and I’d be stopping in Washington, D.C. Hm, I don’t think so, I thought.
As I was peddling through customer service reps for a couple hours, I decided to “live tweet” my problem. Well, as soon as I tweeted that I’d never buy from @Orbitz again, I received a call from a corporate customer service representative, who took over my problem and resolved it in a day. She told me she was calling directly in response to my tweet.
I learned that Twitter is one way to spread the word about a product or service, and can aid in getting a problem resolved. Of course, it might depend on the company. For instance, I also mentioned @usairways and @UnitedAirlines in tweets, but haven’t heard from either. U.S. Airways looks pretty inactive, but United posts daily. Perhaps airlines and other giant compaies are just too bogged down in customer complaints to care about each mishap.
Comments
This maybe true, and God knows I have been telling companies to at least use twittersearch for their name, but many companies have yet to catch on. I imagine they feel the cost of hiring a twitter monitor are prohibitive or don't have the imagination to make it a part of the job of CSR's. I wrote an article about it on my blog at rsaling.wordpress.com
Wow, that's kind of impressive. Companies certainly should consider taking a proactive approach to customer service, because there are plenty of people who won't report a bad experience, but they'll tell everyone they know. Nice to hear of a business use for social networking that doesn't involve employers spying.
This was a really great example of how important Twitter is to companies.
I just wrote about this EXACT same thing as it regards the travel industry and airlines. Just posted my article today. The discount airlines are much more on top of this than the big airlines. Check out my article on Sacramento Budget Travel Examiner to get a slightly different take on this.
Jeremy Branham
Sacramento Budget Travel Examiner
Thanks for all of the great comments! Speaking of flying, I just went on vacation, so sorry for the delay in responding. Actually I was on the flights that started this whole mess. (Luckily there were seats for me, though there was still some minor confusion about my ticket. Sigh.)
@Jeremy - Thanks so much for sharing that info. That makes sense that the cheaper airlines are zooming in more on the customer, and it seems that way in my experience as well. I recommend anyone check out Jeremy's piece by Googling "Low-cost airlines use Facebook and Twitter to respond to passengers."
@Joanna, Ananda and Richard - I agree that companies should be proactive with social media, but that it's not totally caught on yet. I really believe it will become more of a necessity. It will be interesting to watch!
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