@AmericanAir

From June 19^th through the 24^th, I followed @AmericanAir, the official tweeter site for American Airlines Customer Relations, http://www.aa.com/customerrelations.  I started flying American Airlines when I moved to Dallas, since AA has a hub at DFW.  I’m used to American now, earning miles, and having been able to redeem them twice to date with no or minimal scheduling restriction.  I’ve been travelling a lot this year, and for the first time, will attain gold status after only 2 more segments.  I thought it would be interesting to follow American this week because I suspected they deal with a lot of upset travelers.  I was curious to see how they handled different situations, what the most common issues they dealt with were, and I hoped to learn something useful for when I might encounter the very same issues…

In the section where tweeter allows you to draft a small description, @AmericanAir writes: “Thanks for checking in! Send your praise, concerns and suggestions to the link below to ensure an appropriate response from American Airlines.”  How interesting!  American Airlines invites you to go to their website to submit your comments?  This seems a little bit odd, considering what Paul Gillin wrote in The New Influencers: “Another truth with the blogosphere [of which twitter is part] is that transparency is key to working in this medium.” It would be very interesting to find out how many travelers, when choosing between tweeting, direct-messaging (DM) and going to the website actually DM or chose the website.  If I were to venture a guess, I’d say probably not that many, since tweeter is a new form of communication, and passengers want to publicly express their thoughts, opinions and emotions… I wonder if American would be better served writing something else in their introduction…

This past week, @AmericanAir tweeted 93 times.  Of these 93 times, 87, or 94% were in response to tweets mentioning @AmericanAir.  This tells me that American scans the Tweeterverse to see what is being shared about its brand.  Actually, AA scans the entire social web, as it posts to tweeter using Tweetdeck, a website that, as we learned in our previous class, allows to efficiently search the social web for mentions of your brand.   American, in that regard is very pro-active, and takes social networking very seriously.  It wants to avoid “blog swarms,” like the one that targeted United a couple of years ago, when a Youtube video stirred quite a buzz:  “United breaks guitars…” (http://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo).  Contrast that to today’s timely post by pop-group Hanson “Thanks to @AmericanAir for helping repair/replace the broken guitar. – ISAAC” What are the odds, right? Responding to tweets mentioning @AmericanAir, as identified by scanning of the online social universe, seems to be the primary purpose of the @American Air tweet page.  Only 6 tweets were not in response to passenger comments. 

The six “unsolicited” tweets break down as follows:  two tweets about fare sales (4^th of July travel, international travel); two “fun/exciting” tweets about AA travelers habits or happenings: One is getting married this week-end after meeting her fiancé on an AA flight, the other browses AA.com when she gets bored, looking for future trips; one tweet simply read “ALERT: Reservations is all-hands managing high call traffic due to #weather last night” indicating that AA is aware and is working diligently to resolve the issues; the last tweet was in regards to AA’s work on its environmental footprint, as @AmericanAir  tweets: “We’re testing the #ecoDemonstrator Program w/ Boeing to make flying cleaner for the #environment! More: http://bit.ly/AAECODEMO.”  

Of the other 87 tweets, 15 included requests for the individual originating the tweet to direct message American Airlines back with specific information, or to follow @American Air in order for AA to DM specific information to the traveler.  I did not know Tweeter offered the option to direct message.  Apparently, one can DM @AmericanAir, whether or not she is following, but one needs to follow @American Air in order for American to be able to DM back.  Furthermore, the typical exchange between a traveler and @AmericanAir lasts 2 or 3 tweeted responses.  In that regards, @AmericanAir seems to use tweeter as a chat substitute.  

And now, I am sure you’d like to know what the key topics American customers tweet about that led to AA tweet responses… Two travelers tweeted about they planned to use their AA miles.  Ten travelers tweeted to thank AA employees for helping resolve an issue (wow! That’s 11%) and six more gave a shout out for AA’s Admiral’s club, in-flight internet and plug-ins and cheap ticket prices, some explicitly mentioning AA’s deal finder app (only available for PC right now, as one tweeter noted).  One traveler complimented American on a cool paint job for one of its jets (http://lockerz.com/s/113387928), three passengers tweeted for help with a flight cancellation, and one for help with a seat assignment.  LondonGirlinLA tweeted about not booking an AA flight because of a $600 price difference with USAir; thirteen passengers tweeted to complain about being bumped, delayed, or hit with flight cancellations, which is not all that bad.  @AmericanAir always responded professionally, apologetically and attempted to get additional detail and information in order to better help.  Only three tweets mentioned lost baggage.  A couple complaints dealt with maintenance issues that @AmericanAir said would be addressed promptly: one aircraft’s cabin was filthy, and in the other, some of the TV monitors were not functioning properly.  One tweet mentioned American’s lost opportunity to earn goodwill when not upgrading to first class some of the 25 passengers on a near-empty recent flight.

In conclusion, American Airlines is definitely engaged with the social web, tracking and monitoring what is being shared about its brand. It does not appear to use tweeter as an aggressive advertising tool, though it does play a role in its marketing strategy.  American Airlines has taken to heart some of the advice published by Razorfish, namely the role played by key, social and known peer influencers in the marketing funnel.  This is good for American Airlines, though I felt that the way it used tweeter was more for public relations, feeding information via this new portal to a traditional customer service department.