More Airlines Turning to Twitter

USA Today: Greg Chapman of Letts, Iowa, has never been on a mountain or seen an ocean. But he knows how to tweet. To get the best view for his first West Coast trip, he tweeted Southwest Airlines Directly to ask on which side of the aircraft he should sit during the Chicago-San Diego flight in June.

Southwest referred the message to one of its tweeting pilots, who answered Chapman's questions on the public channel: Sitting on the left side would give him a nice view of downtown San Diego and the glistening Pacific Ocean as the plane lands.

"It was a pleasant surprise and informative," Chapman says. "They have more than a million followers. I wasn't really expecting a reply."

Few industries test their customers' patience like the airlines. Travelers tweet daily about delays, cancellations, lost bags and testy gate agents. And airlines respond, often quickly and often to defuse tension. Twitter gives them an illusion of real-time communication — if not always problem-solving.

Troy Thompson, a social-media analyst, says,"Twitter simply highlights customer service issues faster and more publicly than ever before."

In October, JetBlue ramped up its Twitter team to respond quickly to messages. The 17 staffers assigned to it work around the clock in shifts. Delta Air Lines, which has one of the industry's most prolific Twitter accounts, will go from nine to 12 employees who monitor its dedicated customer service channel, @DeltaAssist, 24 hours a day.

In May, Delta broke the mold with @DeltaAssist in hopes that it could serve as a complementary channel to its toll-free number and website. Other carriers are studying the model. Southwest is working to add a customer service staffer to its Twitter team to handle requests, says Christi McNeill of Southwest.

What Twitter offers most is a venue for frustrated travelers to blow off steam. "But from the response side, you're better off going to the courtesy phone," Thompson advises.

The airlines have discovered Twitter isn't a great sales tool. JetBlue has a dedicated account for selling some unsold seats, JetBlue Cheeps, but its inventory is limited to last-minute-travel tickets. Neither Delta nor American offers Twitter-only fare sales. Late last year, United abandoned its Twitter-users-only sales, called Twares, because of lackluster demand.

Although it doesn't generate sales, airline executives say, Twitter offers a chance to address a complaint that has dogged airlines for years: that they go quiet precisely when customers want to hear from them most. Twitter lets airlines get their messages out quickly, and widely

Read Entire Article