airlines | Nicole Monahan

For the past few weeks, my absence has been the cause of: bridesmaid duties (never again), vacation, and hurricane Sandy. This post is specifically geared towards two brands who’s social responses stood out to me over the past week and a half.

The key players I’m thinking of here are airlines, as my vacation last week was a near miss. At no fault to the airline under such circumstances, these are two examples of a social crisis plan in action and one that’s not:

Jetblue wins for my customer loyalty and I wasn’t even flying with them. Through Twitter these notifications consistently kept me updated:

Then Jetblue updated its Twitter, Every. single. day…

And even in Spanish:

I also received 2 emails with updates.

On the contrary was the airline I had booked a flight with… Delta.

What was in their crisis plan you ask? 0 emails (except notifying me my flight was cancelled), and these 2 updates on Twitter, below. The real icing on the cake was a tie between, being on hold for an hour only to be hung up on + having to go through 3 people to get to a supervisor.

The New Social Crisis Plan of Action:

Good rule of thumb: Situations, conflicts, complaints should never get to the point of a supervisor. That’s like giving the other team the ball and getting out of their way to score a touchdown. Here are a few other tips for brands/company’s to tackle crisis situations.

Every member of the team should be on the same page. Given a message that stays consistent.
Have a clear understand of the situation, and stay on top of current updates.
Be trained to give a clear response to the situation, with empathy.
Have the tools, courage, and power to take control of the problem on their own.

A small part of me knows this is a bit of a rant. But this experience has also helped me realize how important it is to have some sort of crisis management plan for your company, especially around your social. It’s many peoples go to source for information and updates because now a days it takes so much longer to get approvals and press releases out. Think about it.

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