American Airlines Crisis Management and Response
American Airlines has been in the news a lot recently because of the cancellation of thousands of flights due to mechanical troubles. What has been interesting is watching how AA have approached this PR nightmare. AA first step in conjunction with its PR agency of record, Weber Shandwick, was to immediately initiate a major crisis-communications plan.
AA Crisis Response
- Immediately issued a press release to drive passengers to the advisory section on its website for updates
- Communicated with frontline employees so they were prepared to deal with questions from travelers
- Proactively and reactively worked with media through its news desk
- Sent update e-mails to Advance members
- Compensated stranded passengers
- Continued to monitor feedback from customers, employees and media to keep stakeholders fully informed
Mike Flanagan, senior VP at Weber and agency lead on the American account in an Adage interview said the goal was to quickly convey two messages to its customers: what the situation was flight cancellations and how “we were getting them back in service,” followed by “letting customers know we would do everything to reaccommodate them.”
“We fly over 100 million passengers a year, and they are all important to us,” he said. “A large percentage of them fly with us exclusively, so the most important goal was to stay in contact and let them know what was going on. And we used every communications channel we have available to us.”
What I found most interesting was this follow-up quote from Flanagan.
“Mr. Flanagan said the airline’s strategy included some new plays, including monitoring blogs, as soon as the crisis started. “That was an important part of our strategy,” he said. “And we felt, in general, that the information was generally correct and balanced enough to where we didn’t have to get involved in the conversation. Some of the remarks were tough to take and on some blogs people were actually defending us.”
Interesting that AA felt the blogosphere was balanced enough that they did not have to enter the conversation. Were they correct?
Heather Hopkins at Hitwise had an interesting post on where people were going after visiting AA.com. And surprisingly consumers were going from AA.com to websites for Email Services, Social Networks and News and Media.
The American Airlines website asked customers who were inconvenienced by the canceled flights to send an email to request compensation. So seeing an increase in traffic of 13% to Email Services makes sense. What stood out to me was the 74% increase in traffic to Social Networking and Forums.
MySpace was the #15 website visited after AA.com last week, up from #30 the week before. Last week 1 in 30 visits to AA.com left to go to a social network. This serves as a good reminder that customers broadcast their experience to friends. How American handled the cancellations and how they continue to handle claims is sure to be broadcast online - and affect their brand.
MySpace is still thought of as a pre-teen and teen social network, but the amount of traffic going to MySpace from AA shows that this is not true. While AA might have been monitoring blogs, I wonder if they were on MySpace, Facebook and the other social networks listening to the conversation there?
Filed under Brand Marketing, Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Apr 21st, 2008
April 21st, 2008 at 8:35 am
[…] Social Media Optimization wrote an interesting post today on American Airlines Crisis Management and ResponseHere’s a quick excerptWhile AA might have been monitoring blogs, I wonder if they were on MySpace, Facebook and the other social networks listening to the conversation there?… […]
April 21st, 2008 at 11:25 pm
American Airlines did appear to have done an excellent job of response, overall, although I was informed by a number of readers of my newsletter that AA’s toll-free number, given out in press materials, was completely overwhelmed for some time.
Jonathan Bernstein, President
Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com
May 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am
[…] David Wilson wrote an interesting post today on American Airlines Crisis Management and Flyers ResponseHere’s a quick excerptAmerican Airlines has been in the news a lot recently because of the cancellation of thousands of flights due to mechanical troubles. What has been interesting is watching how AA have approached this PR nightmare. … […]