I just finished reading a couple of excellent posts by Noah Mallin about his recent poor experience with Delta Airlines. You can read about the experiences at Searchviews and at The Huffington Post. I think most people how fly even occasionally understand that delays happen and many times they are beyond the airline’s control. While these issues are annoying they happen to every airline. The real issue here is the response (or lack of response) from Delta when these issues arise. Obviously the customer service reps at the airport are the front line but in many cases they don’t have much more information than the average traveler. This is where social media marketing can come into play.
How A Social Media Presence Can Alleviate Potential Problems
If Delta had a customer service presence on Twitter and other social media platforms they could have been alerted to the conversation going on about their brand and joined the conversation. Simply acknowledging the issue and providing a real response can go a long way in keeping an issue from getting out of control. Even if there was no way to make those who were venting completely happy by simply talking to them and acknowledging their concerns they could have avoided a situation where the unhappy customer decides he will never use their service again. It may only be one person but that experience is now on the Internet for others to find as well as add their own negative experiences. That means that anyone considering a flight using Delta could decide that they want to go with a different airline. Having a social media presence could have helped Delta avoid the one way conversation and decreased the negative reaction to a certain extent. There will always be disgruntled customers but with a social media presence businesses can directly interact with the negative conversations and if done correctly improve their status in the eyes of the unhappy customer as well as those who find it on social media sites or in the search engine results.
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