At last it’s getting a bit warmer and some of you might be thinking about a city break in Europe, fancy a couple of days in Barcelona, Marrakesh or Venice. If you want to fly, and travel light, chances are you’ve probably thought about booking with Ryanair or easyJet? (other low cost airlines are available 
) But now there’s another option for the cabin case traveller to consider. British Airways (BA) recently announced it was extending cheaper fares from Gatwick for those travelling with hand luggage only.
The news of having another low budget flying option for those all-important city breaks definitely created some social noise. A lot of this came from social media accounts spreading the word:
While others suggested BA were following in the footsteps of low budget airlines such as easyJet:
As it’s still early days for the service, we will come back to looking at the response to it. However, it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of a new product or service so all brands should remember when a new product or service launches… don’t forget about other areas of the business!
Whenever a new product or service is launched, it’s vital there is a balance between promoting it to the best of the brand’s ability and not forgetting to provide exceptional customer service. This is a basic for any company, and should not be dismissed at the expense of something else.
One way of flying high at this is by engaging with a social media monitoring tool. Recently our very own CEO Leon Chaddock took part in a webinar about managing social media for teams. It’s not just marketing departments who can benefit from social media monitoring you know! Social customer service is more important than ever, as more and more people move away from traditional customer service channels. You need to respond to your customers’ needs. BA’s Twitter profile states they will answer any queries between 9-5pm GMT Monday-Friday. But what about those who have night flights or travel on the weekend?
We looked at the social conversation surrounding BA, luggage and fares in general, during the 31 days after the announcement was made, to provide an example of how other areas of the company were being seen by travellers near and far.
Over the one-month period, you can see the news of cheaper flights for passengers with hand luggage only caused mentions to reach a high altitude, peaking at 101 mentions on 13 March. This may not appear like many; however every comment counts in the customer service sector in order to keep your customers happy and your brand reputation alive.
We delved deeper into the social chatter to establish what people were discussing about luggage and fares. The majority of the comments were from social media users who were ranting about their luggage being lost:
However there was one forum user who discussed BA’s lack of flexibility for a fare which needed to be changed due to illness:
Just by looking at this handful of mentions from a variety of sources, it appears plane to see that BA may have some customer service issues. It’s not all bad news for BA though! One forum reply highlighted that the airline allows a larger hand luggage allowance than others, which for some, is the perfect solution:
Find out where your customers are talking about you
With millions of sources out there on the web, which social media monitoring tools can crawl through, it’s important to realise where your brand is being discussed the most. You can find this out via a channel chart.
While many brands will see popular sites like Facebook and Twitter dominating the mentions, brands in industries such as travel, which often rely on recommendations more so than others, see a more diverse spread. Blogs accounted for the highest percentage of mentions, making up 27.5%, with forums landing second accounting for 25.9% and forum replies, 22.9%.
Reviews on sites like TripAdvisor or Wikitravel can be very influential to travellers when they are doing their homework about which brand’s best to go with for flights, hotels and restaurants.
One way of easily keeping up to date with your customers’ opinions and comments about your brand, service or product is to engage with a social media monitoring tool. By using a solution like Sentiment Metrics, you can answer questions and resolve issues in real time through the engagement function and link your brand’s social media accounts to the tool to allow efficient social media engagement. You will also be gathering intelligence on how to best invest in your customer service resources.
If your brand is about to introduce a new service or product, remember it could prove difficult to engage an unhappy customer base!