As almost every travel company on the planet is talking up its social media strategy, unusual and perhaps refreshing to find one which is scaling back its activity.
So while “engaging the customer” is the buzz phrase, with Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and other social initiatives springing up around the travel web, UK low cost airline Jet2 admits that it took the decision to suspended its Twitter account a few months back.
This is perhaps an unusual decision – the airline could have simply stopped tweeting, for example.
An official says the company opted to stop using Twitter entirely – and pulling its profile from the system – because it couldn’t devote the resources to maintaining its Twitter presence in a valuable way for followers.
Until its closure, Jet2 used the account to plug offers and information and sometimes interacted with passengers and potential customers.
It, incidentally, faced some criticism in April 2010 from a high profile UK blogger when he was left stranded in Holland during the ash cloud crisis and tried to obtain information from the airline from its Twitter handlers after getting nowhere via its call centre.
Jet2 says it will resurrect its profile in the future when it has established a strategy to manage it effectively. The Jet2CabinCrew Twitter account is not an authorised company profile, an official says.
But the airline’s decision perhaps sheds some light on the thinking of travel companies that initially rushed to create a presence in various social media channels, only to discover that running such entities requires effort and a coherent strategy.
Axing the account completely, however, may seem a little extreme.
In fact, Jet2 could quite easily have created an automated feed of special offers… similar to many of the travel companies using Twitter.
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That was a little extreme as the value of an already rolling and growing twitter account is very valuable for customers and a business model in this day and age. Even if twitter and social media is in its infancy, transparency is everything and speaks volumes about a company concerned about managing its image. Here at Bruce County Tourism we do automate seasonal based ads but use our twitter feed to answer questions and pick up on trends which change every season. I think it is good practice for a good % of automation and real time interaction to be very balanced where one doesn’t take over the other if using automation. We learned not to make a Stock Market results ticker out of our twitter feed ever again and keep things fresh. It has little value to the REAL people that exist on twitter. Positively yours.
Honestly… I might agree with this. I would have changed the name of the account rather than suspend it. That way you could always use the following again, but frankly…. when you are using twitter correctly, it’s like not picking up your phone call.
The disaster of the RSS feed twitter account and hotels or travel companies push marketing instead of conversing and interacting with potential customers is dangerous. If you can’t admin a twitter account, it’s basically like not picking up your phone when it rings. It’s another distribution channel, and if you don’t administer it right, it can cause anger and more problems than not.
Not sure it’s the right move overall, but it’s the right decision to not have an account rather than poorly tend to one.
To shut down the entire account is not the best move but I don’t blame a company for realizing that just jumping headlong into the social web is not the smart thing to do. One more lesson for all those who still think the right approach is to put tactics before strategy.
The reality, in this situation, was that they thought they would have some amazing new revenue channel when really, they found a new customer service portal.
I think this is a poorly thought out decision, just hand it over to the customer service staff and stop trying to push deals/ force ROI.
*LIKE*
=)
Well said.
Social media is just another communications channel. The channel can’t be properly used unless employees know what to say and do.
Here is what you must be able to answer:
1) Do your employees have the appropriate information and training to be able to deal with customers – to address specific needs, handle enquiries, and speak on behalf of the company?
2) Are your employees empowered to make the decision, take the action or make the statement necessary to address a service situation?
3) Are the appropriate formal processes, exception guidelines and rules of escalation in place?
4) Are the available real-time technologies being used to facilitate the flow of information to necessary to enable these decisions and actions?
http://ccairways.com/blog/social-media-demands-that-airlines-get-the-basics-right/
While these are all good points – I think we should remember that the Travel Industry runs on a fair degree of fear uncertainty and doubt. Normaly players would wan to show that they have control of the situation. The open and now very transparent nature of the market as a result of first the web itself and more recently social media is still an anathema to the airline mentality that lives and breathes opaque.
Cheers
But what is the difference from having updates on your site, a call centre and support via email? Yes you can say that it’s public and that it never “Sleeps”, but really this is just another communication medium. I think Qantas showed what happens when you don’t have an account on Twitter.
People are going to talk about/at you either way, these guys just unplugged the phone.
Some good points at the beginning of this post, but I unfortunately disagree with a lot of the rest!
‘the airline could have simply stopped tweeting’ – Brands using Twitter, open themselves up to engage with the masses, to simply stop communication/tweeting breaks one of the golden rules of ‘being social’, and sends out completely the wrong message (silence!).
The post makes a really valid point – ‘..running such entities requires effort and a coherent strategy..’ – But then appears contradictory to then suggest ‘Jet could quite easily have created an automated feed of special offers..’ . As a strategy, this has to be one of the worst suggestions, not only is it completely impersonal, but by punting only offers to the twitter community is very one-dimensional and way too ‘salesy’ – what if one of your followers asks you a question, to then just be ignored? Negative sentiment all the way!!
In the example mentioned in the post, it mentions how the airline turned off Twitter due to lack of resource. I think if I was in their shoes whereby I couldn’t commit effort/resource with no formal social strategy in place – I’d suspend the account too.
Well said Graham:
“these guys just unplugged the phone.”
This is not a surprise story, it is just facing up to reality and ensuring that any social media strategy is aligned to that of your customer.
2011 will be the key year for social engagement, as the last few years has been about “they do it so, we have to do it”. As marketing budgets get squeezed, businesses will want to see an ROI on any marketing / engagement channel.
There is also the fact that you must ensure your customers are on the social media platforms which you choose, I would imagine that not many Jet2 customers (don’t count followers as customers) are using Twitter but their customers would be using Facebook daily. So where would you put your effort?
We will no doubt see more of this over the coming year.
You can’t be half-pregnant, so if they really don’t have the resources to monitor it, they made the right choice to suspend the account.
To continue the somewhat silly “unplugging the phone” analogy, leaving the account active would effectively leave customers on perpetual hold, asking questions that will never be answered.
I must be spending too much time in the ‘Leeds bubble’ to miss this news. The Jet2com Twitter account was run by an agency in London (Jet2 HQ is based in Leeds) so had no chance (in my opinion) of dealing with consumers enquiries.
What they needed to do was do it in-house for it to work. To pull it completely is ridiculous.