The Travel Strategist

Social Media Guarantees … put up or shut up

November 1, 2011 by Fish 1 Comment

Many companies offer guarantees. Your pizza will arrive in 30 minutes or less, your checked baggage will be at the carousel within 20 minutes, you will be satisfied … but KLM offers a different type of guarantee.

KLM‘s social media team guarantees that all contact with them will be replied to in one-hour or less, 24/7/365. Having actually worked as the person behind KLM’s twitter voice for a while I was ecstatic to see this guarantee. KLM’s customer service in my (slightly biased) opinion is excellent, however when tested KLM’s one-hour or less social media response guarantee seems hollow.

Brett Snyder, of CrankyFlier, sought clarification from KLM on what Tweets and Facebook messages would be replied to and received this answer from the airline’s public relations spokesperson, “Anyone in the world can send a tweet or leave a message on Facebook and there will be a response personally within one hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week . . . As for sarcastic questions and complaints, KLM responds with apologies and tries to remedy the error,” and “it doesn’t even have to be a question to get a response! If KLM is in the tweet KLM will respond if they can help.”

So … that given, in tracking @KLM’s tweets, it seems only a small fraction of tweets are replied to. Brett went so far as to set up a new Twitter account to test KLM’s one-hour guarantee, Tweeting a legitimate customer service problem, but was never replied to. Brett and I Tweeted back and forth in public about KLM’s one-hour social media response guarantee and got a response more than an hour later. In the time in took for KLM to reply there had been just over 40 tweets mentioning “@KLM” directly, in that same time @KLM Tweeted only four times, addressing Twitter mentions only three times.

So … as much as KLM’s one-hour social media guarantee is fantastic, the airline needs to ensure it’s guarantee is executed.

In social media things move quickly and failure to put-up or shut-up when it comes to social media customer service, especially when a guarantee is offered, the value of a customer service reputation can spiral downwards quickly.

Should KLM offer a one-hour guarantee? I think it is a great idea. Should KLM put some restrictions on what will get a response in an hour? Probably. Should KLM ensure it has the manpower and proper tools to ensure it can execute its one-hour guarantee? Absolutely.

KLM has been a leader in social media in the past, it has the opportunity to do so again right now … or it can drop the ball and undo the excellence it is striving for.

Happy Flying!

@flyingwithfish

Filed Under: The Travel Strategist Tagged With: airline, brett snyder, crankyflier, customer service, facebook, KLM, social media, social media travel, steven frischling, twitter

The Social Media Term To Learn – CAM (Customer Attraction Management)

October 27, 2011 by Fish Leave a Comment

Anyone in business is familiar with CRM as Customer Retention Management and ROI as Return On Investment … but within social media before a company can retain customers or get a return on their investment they need to attract their customers … enter CAM … Customer Attraction Management.

The customers are out there, how will you attract them? Many companies simply say “We’ll use Facebook, Twitter and a blog,” but have no long term strategy to effectively deploy their social media. Like anything in business, a strategy that works for one company may not work for another. The strategy an airline uses may not work for an airport, a strategy used by a rental car company may not work for a hotel. These businesses all target the same customers, but they cannot attract travelers the same way … so what is the hook?

The first key to any CAM is knowing not only how to attract your market but how to engage your market. Social media is at its core … social. What do your customer want to hear? What haven’t your customers heard? This simple first step is where many companies fail before they even get out of the gate.

Building effective Customer Attraction Management requires that every person involved in direct engagement with customers via social media understand the fundamentals of engagement and that every department that interacts with social media be part of the content process. The social media attraction process never ends, it is always evolving and solutions are always changing … there is always a customer that can be attracted, don’t ignore them once you have other customers to retain.

Remember this … before you can retain your customers, you must first attract them and you must do this day in and day out, day after day, week after week, consistently.

Happy Flying!

@flyingwithfish

Filed Under: The Travel Strategist Tagged With: airline, blog, blogging, CAM, crm, customer attraction, customer engagement, facebook, ROI, social media, social media engagement, travel, twitter