When you’ve put a lot of energy and time into painstakingly building your own social brand, it makes sense to guard your reputation. Yet, a surprising number of people and even businesses have no plan of action, and in today’s world, things move fast.
Social media and the act of social branding has changed the equation virtually overnight as people discover their own individual personal brand power. Now an entrepreneur like you can be just as much a force of power as a large enterprise. But wait, large or even mid-market companies have plans and systems in place to develop and protect their online reputations because of their sheer size (and revenues). So, how can the entrepreneur or small-business owner apply these brand reputation tactics to their own personal brands? Let’s learn and take action from the big guys.
Never has social customer care or social brand reputation monitoring and management been so important to the commercial airline industry as it is today. Business travelers and general passengers communicate directly with the airlines through social media for everything from purchase to tracking flights to alerts to jet card services to airline points and more.
JetBlue Airways was named No. 1 for customer satisfaction of low-fare carriers by JD Power 11 years in a row (although it lost its crown to Southwest Airlines in 2017). Just this past month, JD Power again shelled out an award to JetBlue for its loyalty program.
One factor might be that JetBlue has been planning for its social brand (and investing in it) since 2012, per a Stanford University case study. JetBlue today has over 2 million Twitter followers. So, how does the company do it?
Laurie Meacham, JetBlue’s manager of customer commitment, told Spokal that JetBlue’s Twitter team doesn’t measure response rates on Twitter to encourage employees “to engage smartly, and for the conversations to be organic and natural. We look for opportunities to add value and connect with our customers, not just respond to every single mention that comes our way.” Further, JetBlue welcomes all new flyers immediately and responds within six minutes maximum to any issues.
As an entrepreneur you can do this, too.
On the flip side of the equation, airlines like American have been faulted and lost customer loyalty by allowing bots and unmanned automatic responses to send tweets to complaining customers. British Airways was caught responding to lost luggage eight hours after the problem occurred. And as I personally witnessed on a recent…
