Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Easyjet Leverages Twitter To Deal With Winter Flight Disruptions
As many holiday makers, travellers and commuters experienced, transport has been one of the biggest casualties of the severe weather conditions over Xmas and New Years. Flights in particular have been disrupted by the snow and cold. The low cost airline Easyjet was one of the hardest hit carriers, cancelling over 250 flights. Despite the inevitable chaos and customer complaints, Easyjet was able to leverage their social media presence to help deal with the crisis.
By directing disgruntled and concerned travellers to their twitter profile Easyjet opened a quick and easily accessible information channel. The Easyjet Twitter account was used to flag fight cancellations, respond to customer questions and generally keep a line of communcation open between the company and its clients.
The fact that Twitter followers more than doubled from the start of December 2009 to Jan 2010 (see chart below) indicates that this channel is providing value for followers.
Of course it’ll be interesting to see how many of these followers Easyjet will retain as the bad weather subsides, but if Easyjet continues to provide value, perhaps by creating exclusive Twitter offers or promotions, it will have created a valuable and profitable marketing asset out of a bad situation.
The Moral of the Story
Every company experiences its share of customer service crises. In this case, Easyjet has demonstrated that it is possible to leverage social media services such as Twitter to help manage these crises and potentially come out in a stronger position at the end of the ordeal.
· · · · · · · · · ·
