Airlines have picked social customer service as their top priority going into 2017.
This is one of the key findings from a survey of senior management executives from 90 airlines from around the world by SimpliFlying, which specialises in aviation marketing.
Its annual study, The Airline Social Media Outlook, found that airlines placed social customer service at 42%, the highest priority in 2016/17 compared to 32% in 2015.
This supersedes branding (26% in 2016, 43% in 2015), ancillary revenues (15% in 2016, 4% in 2015), loyalty programmes (12% in 2016, 7% in 2015) and crisis management (6% in 2016, 13% in 2015).
This year even senior management executives named customer service as their top priority, with 52% of the respondent opting for it compared to 30% last year, stated the report (see chart below).
However, the executives are also looking to align social media better with operations, with 29% opting for this.
Other strategies they want to focus on are restructuring the social media team to better handle the service (5%); better training for employees (10%); acquire better technology and tools (19%); and drive greater resources into social media (19%).
While the survey find challenges facing airlines vary from region to region, the main one are insufficient allocation of resources, lack of tools and software, lack of senior management’s support, inflexible team structure, and lack of training for staff.
Other key findings:
- Budgets are all set to go up next year. 58% of airline professionals are expecting increases in social media budgets.
- Data analytics ranks very high in importance for 95% of airline executives even though half of the teams surveyed suffer from a lack of dedicated data analysts.
• Featured image credit: yuriyzhuravov/iStock
