An airline should keep its ears close to the ground
June 15, 2005
Anyone with their finger on the new media pulse will understand why every business, large or small, should monitor what people are saying about it on the internet.
For a start, it receives valuable customer feedback on a service or product; it can gain early warning of an impending crisis. And while it actively listens to what they have to say, a company can engage its stakeholders in meaningful online conversations.
Blogs have stolen the limelight recently in this regard. But let’s not forget the trusty forum.
Yesterday the New York Times ran a story about FlyerTalk.com:
A travel Web site best known for its message boards where travellers discuss, dissect and often complain about pretty much anything related to travel, but mostly airlines and their frequent-flier programs.
You can read the piece for yourself but the outcome of an email conversation between a forum fan and Continental Airlines’ CEO was dinner for almost two hundred and fifty FlyerTalk regulars in Houston and a frank no-holds-barred discussion of everything on a frequent flier’s agenda of grouses. And that tends to be a big agenda.
Continental learned a lesson. It certainly didn’t expect so many passionate users to turn up at their own expense to talk about its service. It also didn’t expect to have to foot the bill for dinner (the result of betting against the power of the internet).
But the airline also deserves kudos for listening. According to the Times:
Although Continental does not have anyone participating in the FlyerTalk fray in an official capacity, “Lots of us will go to FlyerTalk and pull up our forum and see what our customers are talking about,” said Mark Bergsrud, Continental’s vice president for marketing programs, who attended the Houston event.
Others would do well to follow suit. I visited FlyerTalk this morning and could hardly miss the headline of the first forum post highlighted on the home page.
“Never fly Air France”
Mon dieu.
Tags: travel, online monitoring, reputation management, blogs, passionate customers