Analyzing Customer Relations

in the Airline Industry

This industry snapshot analyzes consumer relations and social media
engagement of ten airline brands in North America and Europe.

Introduction
As social media continues to grow, it is becoming more important for brands
with a high number of customer touchpoints, such as airlines, to maintain
a strong social presence and engage with their audience and customers.
Thousands of customers take their complaints and questions to social media
every day. It is easy to feel the ramifications as a business when people are more
likely to talk about their experiences on social media than they are to call an
airlines customer service number. For this reason, social media is a great tool
for strengthening and maintaining customer relationships, and more specifically,
for repairing a damaged consumers loyalty. Meaningful engagement with
customers on social media by listening and responding to their posts is vital for
airlines that want to improve customer satisfaction and retention.
As a whole, the airline industry has a strong stigma surrounding it; what
comes to mind are long delays, lost baggage, and piled on fees, among other
issues. Every brand that is committed to providing a high level of service to
its customers must make social media a priority within their customer service
programs. For this industry snapshot, we chose the five airlines from North
America and the five from Europe with the highest volume of mentions on social
media, in order to examine the conversation that takes place between these
airlines and their customers.

Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

This industry snapshot analyzes consumer opinions and social media engagement
of ten airline brands within North America and Europe from January 2014 to
March 2015 using Crimson Hexagons ForSight platform. The purpose of this
report is to uncover the answers to the following questions:
1. Is there a relationship between engagement on social media and
consumer sentiment toward an airline?
2. Which airlines have the highest positive and negative sentiment on
social media, and how do their methods differ from those of their
competitors?
3. What are the challenges airlines need to overcome in order to maintain
a successful customer service program on social media?
4. How can airlines utilize insights gained from social data in order to
inform customer service strategy?

The Rising Significance of Social

For Airline Brands
Since January 1st, 2012, the five North American airlines that we analyzed have seen
a 209% increase in all brand mentions, and the five European airlines analyzed have
seen a similar increase, at 168%. This significant increase for both regions confirms
that more and more consumers are taking to social media to discuss these airline
brands, ask general and specific travel questions, and express their satisfaction - or
more likely, their dissatisfaction - towards these brands.

Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

North American Airlines

Volume Comparison
We examined five North American airlines: American Airlines, United Airlines,
Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue.

By sheer volume of posts, American Airlines holds the largest presence on

Twitter, with 594,000 posts during the time period of January 1st, 2014, to
March 23rd, 2015. The next closest airlines are United Airlines, with over
406,000 posts, and Delta Airlines, with over 239,000 posts. It is important to
note that Deltas post volume includes posts mentioning its dedicated customer
service account, @DeltaAssist.

Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

Seasonal Volume Trend

Looking at mentions of these five airlines, we see increases in post volume at
similar times each year. The major increase that we see repeatedly is the summer
travel rush, from late May to early June, and then we see smaller increases in
March, October, and December.

Sentiment Comparison
To conduct our sentiment analysis on each of these brands, we used Crimsons
Opinion analysis tool to create user-defined sentiment categories focusing on
customer service. With a powerful machine learning algorithm, we trained the
monitor based on a handful of posts to accurately sort all posts within our search
parameters into the sentiment categories that we defined. After analyzing all
of these accounts, we found that negative sentiment towards the airlines is
significantly higher than positive sentiment. Of the five airlines, average negative
sentiment is 47%, while positive sentiment averages at just over 20%.

Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

JetBlue Sentiment Analysis

The airline with the highest percentage of positive sentiment posts is JetBlue, at
33%. Of JetBlues total post volume, 10% is related to positive mentions pertaining
to customer service, while the remaining 23% is categorized as general positive
posts mentioning the airline brand. Since January 2014, positive sentiment has
increased by 3% for the airline, and negative sentiment is down 4%.

United Airlines
Sentiment Analysis
United Airlines and American Airlines have the highest percentage of posts
with negative sentiment, each at 56% of overall brand conversation. For United
Airlines, there has been no shift in the percentage of negative sentiment posts
since January 2014, and positive sentiment has only increased by 1%. Of all
relevant posts about United Airlines, 26% are negative customer service-related
posts, while the remaining 30% of negative posts is split evenly between airline
delays, luggage issues, and general negative mentions of the brand.

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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

American Airlines
Sentiment Analysis
Negative sentiment posts have increased by 7% for American Airlines since
January 2014. To further the companys social media issues, only 10% of posts
mentioning the brand are of positive sentiment, with less than 1% of the overall
volume being positive customer service-related posts. While we see that American
Airlines does have a customer service program on Twitter, why is it that positive
sentiment is so low and negative so high, with no positive shift in over a year?

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Social Media
Language Differences
When looking at the interactions between American Airlines and its customers,
there is a noticeably different set of language used by customers and the
American Airlines customer service representatives. Twitter was designed to be a
social platform where relatively informal conversation takes place, yet American
Airlines has not adapted its customer service methods to fit this social setting. The
companys replies to customers are very formal and do not come off as personal.
JetBlue, on the other hand, who has a stronger customer service ranking, engages
much more effectively with its customers by providing less formal responses
that come off as much more personalized, while still taking care of customers
questions and issues.

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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

Low Cost Airline Travel Options

Low cost airlines are very popular throughout Europe, but have yet to make
a major claim to the North American market. In the last 9 months, Twitter
conversation coming out of North America surrounding low cost travel has risen
by 109%, which clearly shows the growing interest in it as a travel option.

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Demographics Comparison
We also see a shift in consumer demographics of those discussing lower cost
airlines compared to general airline conversation in North America. General
conversation is 40% female and 60% male, but for low cost travel the audience
is 53% female and 47% male. We also see a significant shift in age: of the general
conversation, 67% of posts come from users 35 and above, and 29% come from
users between the age of 18 and 34, yet with those discussing low cost travel,
only 36% of posts are coming from users 35 and above, and 54% are coming from
users between the ages of 18 and 34.

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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

EURoPEAN AIRlINEs

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Volume Comparison
The five European airlines we analyzed are British Airways, Ryanair, KLM, easyJet,
and Virgin Atlantic. British Airways dominated the social media conversation on
Twitter with over 248,000 posts during the time period of January 1st, 2014, to
March 23rd, 2015.

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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

Sentiment Analysis Comparison

KLM and Virgin Atlantic tied for the highest percentage of positive sentiment,
with 27% of the overall conversation. Virgin Atlantic is also the airline with the
lowest amount of negative conversation, accounting for just 17% of its total
conversation. However, KLM and Virgin Atlantic have achieved this high positive
sentiment for different reasons. Satisfaction with customer service accounts for
14% of KLMs positive sentiment, while 13% results from the overall liking of the
airline. In the case of Virgin Atlantic, only 5% of the overall conversation comes
from satisfaction with customer service, and the rest from general positive
brand mentions.

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Measuring Social Presence

and Engagement
We also measured each airlines social presence and engagement based on the
brands own post volume over a one year period, from February 2014 to February
2015. In the case of KLM, we included two of the brands location-specific Twitter
accounts: @KLM_US and @KLM_UK. Similarly, for Virgin Atlantic we included its US
specific Twitter account: @Virgin_Atlantic.

KLM has the largest post volume, with nearly 145,000 posts over the time period
analyzed. The airline also has the highest percentage of positive conversation
related to customer service. Furthermore, by analyzing the number of mentions
of the KLM brand on Twitter and the number of posts tweeted by KLM, we can see
that around 45% of all mentions of the airline are responded to, which is a higher
percentage than any other European airline that we analyzed. This demonstrates
that if an airline wants to maintain a positive brand reputation and satisfy its
customers, it is key to create a dialogue with followers on social media.
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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

Measuring Airline Response Rates

KLM has been the most consistent airline in terms of the amount of tweets it has
responded to since last year. Since January 2014, KLM has increased its amount
of posts by just 43%, while all other airlines have increased their amount of posts
dramatically, showing that they now recognize the opportunity that lies in the use
of social media and have begun to engage more with customers. For example,
British Airways has increased its amount of posts by 1,473%, easyJet by 340%, Virgin
Atlantic by 86%, and Ryanair by 60%, since January 2014.

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Ryanair Sentiment Analysis

We found that the airline with the highest negative percentage of overall
conversation is Ryanair, with 46%. Dissatisfaction with the airlines customer
service accounts for 29%, while posts from users complaining about add-on
fees account for 7%. Complaints about flight delays, cancellations, and general
dislike toward the airline account for the rest of Ryanairs negative conversation.
While we have seen positive sentiment towards the airline rise from 10% to
19% between April 1st, 2012, and March 31st, 2015, weve also seen negative
sentiment towards its customer service rise from 25% to 30% during the same
time frame.

Again, we see a similar pattern when it comes to brand engagement. Looking

at the number of mentions that Ryanair has received and its post volume from
February 2014 to February 2015, we see that only 20% of all customer mentions
of the airline are replied to by the customer service staff, which we believe to be
one of the reasons why Ryanair customers are highly dissatisfied with the airlines
customer service program.
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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

Analyzing Virgin Atlantics

Positive Sentiment
Virgin Atlantic is one of the two airline brands with the highest positive sentiment on
social media (27%) and is also the airline with the lowest negative sentiment (17%).
However, even though Virgin Atlantic has these strong numbers, it is the airline with
the lowest percentage of mentions responded to: only about 15% of all mentions of
the airline are replied to. So why do consumers show such strong positive sentiment
towards an airline that does not often engage with said consumers?

Virgin Atlantic has a high positive sentiment, most of which is derived from general
liking of the brand. We explored Virgin Atlantics positive conversation and found
that customers truly enjoy all aspects of the in-flight experience. Virgin Atlantic is
recognized for having friendly service, exciting innovations, and a unique brand
message when compared against other airlines. Even though Virgin Atlantics
customers are satisfied with the airlines innovativeness, originality, and uniqueness,
we believe that the airline would benefit from continuing to increase its post volume
and engagement with social users mentioning the brand.
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Conclusion
This industry report shows that the importance of social media is growing
within this industry. One of the key takeaways of this study is that brands
need to adopt a more fluid and informal language when communicating with
customers over social media. Brands such as American Airlines need to look
to its competitors, such as JetBlue, in order to improve communication with
its customers. While poor communication methods are not the only reason
for negative sentiment within the airline industry, we believe that improved
communications will help resolve issues on social media and in turn, result in a
higher percentage of positive posts mentioning the airlines.
We also discovered that having a strong and unique brand, like Virgin Atlantic
does, is a key factor in building and maintaining an overall positive sentiment
with its customers. However, as we mentioned previously, engaging on social
media with customers in a timely and personalized way is also extremely
important for any airline that wants to satisfy and retain its customers.
Furthermore, we are confident that airlines could benefit from analyzing
historical data. In our analysis, we found that most airlines have a consistent
reply rate to posts throughout the year. Even over the months where mentions
increase dramatically because people are taking vacations, airlines do not
increase their reply rate accordingly. This means that most airlines are not
keeping track of historical social media data and are not able to plan ahead

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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

for the times when they need more people to join their social media teams. If
an airline used social data to predict when the volume of mentions increases, it
could hire temporary staff to help manage its social media accounts during those
busy periods, resulting in a higher response rate, more satisfied customers, and
an improved brand perception.
Social media offers brands a new platform for providing quality service to their
customers. Due to its public nature, it is crucial for brands to have a well-thoughtout customer service program in order to keep customers satisfied and to avoid
any PR crises. Because of its newness, there is still plenty to learn and explore,
but it is absolutely necessary to utilize this medium to your brands fullest
capabilities. With the proper set of social monitoring and analysis tools in your
hands, you can gain insight into both your brand and customers, which allows
you to strengthen your companys customer service program.

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Crimson Hexagon
Crimson Hexagon is a leading provider of social media
analysis software. Powered by patented technology and
an in-house data library of more than 500 billion posts,
Crimson Hexagons ForSight platform helps hundreds of
brands and agencies answer critical business questions
through the insights derived from social data. Clients include
leading global organizations such as General Mills, Starbucks,
Paramount Pictures, Microsoft, and Twitter, and leading
agencies such as Translation, Edelman, and We Are Social.
Find us on Twitter @crimsonhexagon.

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Analyzing Customer Relations in the Airline Industry

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Analyzing
Customer
Relations in the Airline Industry
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