Airlines to Increase Social Media Budgets in 2015
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Today, SimpliFlying has released their Airline Social Media Outlook for 2015 which examines the budgets, challenges, and metrics involved in social media in the airline industry.
Surveying 148 executives from 87 airlines across five regions including APAC, Middle East, Europe, Americas and Africa, SimpliFlying found that there’s a disconnect between how airline executives would like to use social media under ideal circumstances, and how they currently are. More executives, 87 percent, would like to use social media data to develop customer insights, but only half are currently leveraging these analytics. Less than half use social media for new product strategies, but 78 percent of executives poll said that they would like to. And 76 percent want to use social media data to enhance customer service – but less than two thirds of the respondents polled said they were doing this now.
According to 79 percent of respondents, the primary goal expressed for social media use was to improve customer service, while 76 percent would also like to use social media to raise brand awareness, and 56 percent want to drive customer loyalty. Often lauded as the best airline on social media, KLM’s recent #HappytoHelp promotion, which includes the goal of responding to every single travel query on Twitter, sets the bar pretty high for customer service. American Airlines has invested in 21 dedicated social media staff who currently manage approximately 240 tweets/hour and aim to respond to each tweet within a 15-minute window. Airlines have also recently turned to travel bloggers to help raise brand awareness and reach the millennial demographic.
Challenges faced in accomplishing these goals include insufficient allocation of resources to social media (59%), organizational structure (44%), lack of technology infrastructure (30%), lack of budget (30%), lack of training (26%), among others. Acquainting staff with the appropriate ways to respond for social mediums was noted as a particular challenge by Jonathan Pierce, director of Social at American Airlines, who at Skift’s Global Forum noted, “People hired are accustomed to customer service over the phone and not usually doing that in writing, so we’ve had to train them for this new medium.”
Fortunately, it seems that by 2015, the most cited challenge of insufficient resources will be addressed, as 63 percent of executives surveyed shared that their social media budgets will increase in the coming years.
To see more findings, download the full report or watch the video below.
Image courtesy of SimpliFlying.