When is the last time an individual from one of the other airlines fully explained the background behind a major schedule change, and then responded to questions not from the media but actual passengers? Bill Owen from our Schedule Planning Department does this on a regular basis. And you know what? “Mainstream” journalists pay attention to our blog, they link to it, and they use if for story idea, just as they did with The Cranky Flyer and the LGB issue.

But there is more to these new media outlets than just publishing our material in the blogosphere: ‘When we started our blog three years ago, we knew conversations were going on about us whetherr we wwere involved or not, and we wanted to be a part of those conversations. So besides our blog and the conversation that goes on there, our Team actively monitors and participates on other blogs like The Cranky Flyer (which incidentally in our blog poll, is our reader’s favorite airline blog–next to Nuts About Southwest, of course).

Does participating in social media directly generate revenue? That’s hard to measure, but we know it does build brand loyalty. You cite Ryanair’s well known stance on blogging and that you still fly them for price and schedule. However, given the choice of of a competitor offering same price and similar schedule, we like to think brand loyalty and reputation is important.

I agree that it takes time and effort and that’s why you should look for the influencers and focus on them. The influencer list is different for every airline and it can change frequently. So you need to at least be paying close attention to who is talking about you. If they start getting any traction, airlines need to make sure it doesn’t get out of control before they’ve had a chance to weigh in with their side of the story.

On to Twitter, it’s certainly fair to say that this doesn’t apply to all airlines out there. In fact, I would argue that Ryanair isn’t really in the customer service business. They’re in the business of cheap freight transportation. But for those operations that center their brand around customer service, Twitter can be very powerful.

There are potential cost savings opportunities as well. If you have people looking for real-time answers via Twitter, it may reduce your call volume to the call center or even the lines at the gates and ticket counters, depending upon how much you can help them of course. And theoretically it should reduce the volume to your customer relations group as well since the problems can be solved before they become much bigger. I think there can be real numbers associated with the use of Twitter, but that’s for each airline to review.

Feedback so far has been great!

Paul
Head of Customer Experience
@easyJetCare

Ryanair get slagged off on the web and in print in Europe every day of the year – every influential journalist has something bad to say about them. I still fly with them more than any other airline (about a dozen round trips in 2009) because they fly the places I want to go at times conveninent to me and at a very good price. Certain journalists may influence me…. but price and schedule will always win out.

But talking to you a local LGB boy he knew your media was the internet. And like you said this is the new media, and is where most of the under 40 age group gets their news and quickly shares it with others. Word of mouth spreads faster over the internet these days more then it ever did before the internet. JetBlue having private talks with the airport and local elected officials would never get things done quickly.

So your interview blog got noticed by the LGB locals and it started the ball rolling. Everyone knows the best way to see action on something is to get the public on the war path

Before say an airline like American would have it’s PR people spend a week writing a speech that the CEO would give about something. It would be a planned event and info given to the public that the airline would craft to make things look good and only on what they wanted to share. Now a days with IM, texting, blogs, Twitter etc average everyday people will write about something that happen to them in their own words good or bad and that words spreads fast since it’s easy to share,

The airlines and other big company’s need to start paying attention and get into the new media to keep inline with todays way of sharing news. And like you said, we don’t want to hear about a fare sale, but info that helps us get from point A to point B.

Thanks to iPhones and Blackberry’s people on the move can send out info as it happens, including to the airline, and the airlines need to be ready to handle the ways of the 21st Century and get out of the 1950′s and 60′s.

Nicholas – It’s in their customer bill of rights that you get a $15 voucher if the TV doesn’t work. I know that they do flag it automatically when the problems are reported, but that doesn’t mean that things don’t fall through the cracks. So if you didn’t get compensated, you might want to send them a note.

I understand the costs of automatically providing compensation are a bit high, but does the consumer always have to complain?