February 18, 2009

Tied to the Twitter listening post

How HP and JetBlue are using social media as a listening post -- one that can influence corporate policy

Back in early January, a regional bicycling publication BikePortland.org in Portland, Oregon covered the saga of a JetBlue customer who was charged $50 for checking his bike as baggage. The customer, and BikePortland.org, thought JetBlue’s baggage policy regarding bikes was out of line. The unhappy JetBlue customer had worn himself out complaining via e-mail and phone and had been told this was policy and nothing could be done about it. But when BikePortland.org tweeted a link to its article on Twitter, Morgan Johnston, Manager of Corporate Communications for JetBlue Airways saw it.

"When I saw the link come up on Twitter, I followed the story first from their article and then to an article [by the JetBlue customer] at BTA4bikes ," says Johnston. "It was clear to me that the policy needed clarification. So, after a quick flurry of talks internally, we were able to clarify our policy, communicate that internally, and reach out through e-mail and Twitter to inform [BikePortland and the unhappy customer] that we had updated our policy." This all happened within 24 hours of the Tweet that got Johnston's attention.

[ For more on attaining customer service via social media, see earlier Gripe Line posts: "Hacking the customer service game" and "On becoming the squeakiest wheel" ]

Not every company has a team of people dedicated to staffing Twitter and other social media complaints the way Comcast, Mozy, and other companies I've spoken to for this series on social media do. For some companies, the effort is akin to keeping an ear to a listening post. In these cases, though, often the person -- or people -- tied to this listening post are in a more influential position than a customer service representative. In the case of JetBlue, the director of corporate communications was listening and was in a position to quickly clarify company policy when he saw a customer with a valid point. Because of the emerging nature of social media and how easy it is to simply tune in to the noise of the rabble, this might well be a common scenario in big companies.

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JohnQWorker 28-Jun-09 6:58pm
I work for EDS OS in Germany we were bought by HP last year. 6 top execs @HP earned more than $142 million usd in 2008. Both companies have been profitable but HP has been slashing jobs like its going out of style. In Germany, every third person is currently planned to lose their jobs. Because management has not wavered in their plan to cut so many jobs, we have unionised and voted by nearly 92% to make a prolonged strike (we had a series of "warning" strikes which didn't seem to have any effect). HP has bought 116 companies since 1986 and 31 since Mark Hurd has been CEO. Originally 24,600 jobs were planned to be cut as part of integrating EDS into HP, in Feburary Mark Hurd "asked" us to take a 5% pay cut to "save" 20,000 jobs, and in May he announced that there'd be another 2% workforce reduction (another 6,000 + jobs) because profit had not reached its planned levels. If you're doing the math that is over 30,000 jobs lost at a profitable company and this is only related to the EDS accuistion and doesn't take into account the acquistion of Compaq or any other accuistion! It is time that companies realize that they don't just have an obligation to "maximise shareholder value" but to the communities that they do business in, their employees, and to look after the long-term health and viability of the company. Our strike information can be found at http://www.edsser.de We're on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/edshponstrike Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1789816105 Facebook group: "EDS Employees Say Yes To HP, But For Us All" at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=91466762718&ref=mf Twitter: http://twitter.com/JohnQWorker MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/johnqworker Webcam broadcasting live from main strike location: Webcam: http://de.justin.tv/strike_at_eds (broacast is from 8:00-15:00 Central European Time on strike days) I'm on various other sites, look for JohnQWorker I could use some help and would welcome it! John Q Worker An American working for EDS OS (an HP company) in Germany

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