BA Social Media Final Presentation

Engaging Customers through Social Media

Process

• We worked with many different departments to put together this project• Strategic Transformation—Despina Papaioannou

• Marketing—Anne Tedesco, Melissa Fernandez

• Customer Relations—Carol O’Rourke

• Claire & Vanessa

• Initial confusion about how to treat social media: customer service and/or marketing?

• Discovered new use for social media: unique platform for multiple purposes

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United Breaks GuitarsWhat NOT to do on social media!!


Elspeth Ong &Laurel GovermanJuly 28th, 2010

Engaging Customers through Social Media 5

Agenda

I. Overview of Social MediaoWhy businesses should care about this new channel

II. Competitive AnalysisoBenchmarking against other airlines

III. Relevance to British AirwaysoWhat we are currently doing

IV. Potential Plan of ActionoEvolution of BA social media implementation


I. Overview of Social Media

What is social media?Social media allows people to connect with each other

more extensively and quickly than ever before



Why social media?

Social media is a unique hybrid of advertising/PR/CRM due to its main characteristics:

• Immediacy

• Far reach (millions of people are online)

• Ability to form personal relationships

with customers

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Popularity of social media

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Social media platforms useful to BAHighest penetration:

• Facebook(500 million users)

Fastest growth:

• Twitter(75+ million users)

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Increasingly public platformWhether positive or negative, consumer sentiment is

broadcast via social media

• Positives:

• Low key praise is good for brand image

• Negatives:

• Destroy brand image in a matter of hours

• United Breaks Guitars

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II. Competitive Analysis

Positive case study

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II. Competitive Analysis

Benchmarking against competitors

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Airline # of Followers Mostly Proactive/

Reactive?

British Airways 66,918 Reactive

Delta 70,923 Both,

@DeltaAssist acct.

JetBlue 1,594,065 Both

Southwest 1,042,717 Both

Lufthansa 36,551 Proactive

United 100,152 Both

Virgin Atlantic 13852 Proactive


III. Relevance to British Airways

BA customers are on social media• Our travellers correspond with the largest segment

of users on Twitter

*BA Exec Club members flying biz + leisure and are US Residents (Apr 09- Mar 10)

• Twitter and Facebook users are most likely to be affluent and living in an urban area (Nielsen)

Age Group

BA N.A.*

Facebook

Twitter

26-34 12% 23% 19.6%

35-54 49% 31% 41.7%



Potential for engaging on Facebook

Strengths:

• High brand loyalty

Weaknesses:

• No interaction with fans

Opportunities:

• Build relationships with customers

• Threats

• Losing customers to competitors



Active engagement on Twitter

Strengths:

• Knowledgeable and friendly

Weaknesses:

• Response times are inconsistent

Opportunities:

• Low cost, wide reach

Threats

• Negativity spreads rapidly



Types of interaction on Twitter

Incoming tweets by type(June 12- July 12, 2010)

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Twitter allows us to engage customers in a speedy way

•General FeedbackShow that we are listening

•Quick Questions Answer queries speedily

•Service seekingAcknowledge customer concerns



Departments involved on Twitter

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•General feedback: PR

•Consumer-generated opinions on a public medium•Our response has impacts customer perception of brand

Incoming tweets by type(June 12- July 12, 2010)

•Quick questions: Customer service•Similar to those handled by ba.com & call centre•However, many of these questions only require short replies

•Service seeking: PR & Customer service

•Relates to core customer needs•However, situation may escalate if not handled well


IV. Potential Plan of Action

Strategy for engagement

FacebookPR & Marketing

• Engage with relevant and interesting content and ask the user what they think

• Soft-sell BA products (e.g. Metrotwin) and sentiments (British identity)

TwitterPR & Customer service

• Focus on customer service

• Maintain good brand image and control potential PR fiascos

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Type of engagement

Proactive Reactive

Emotional connectio

n

Soft-sell promos

Link to Promos

on ba.com

Short answers

Link to FAQ on ba.com

Follow up

Facebook X X X

Twitter X X X X X X



Disruption planningCan be used to communicate with customers both

personally and on a mass scale:

• Immediate proactive dissemination of up to date information regarding current crisis

• Reassure customers

• Be open and honest with our customers



Possible options1. No change of current strategy

• Pros: Gain better understanding of social media

• Cons: May delay entering into channel

2. Outsource to social media agency

• Pros: No added complexity internally

• Cons: High cost, Lack of control, Level of “expertise” uncertain

3. Centralize to UK in a cross-functional team

• Pros: Globally consistent service proposition for customer

• Cons: Cannot manage 24/7, difficult to deal with market variations

4. In-source across regional offices

• Pros: Adapts to consumer preferences across regions

• Cons: Inconsistent service for customer21



Proposed plan for BA social media

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• Understand what BA customers want from social media

• Gain expertise from social media specialists

• Increase no. of users on BA social media accounts

• Evaluate success using metrics

• Integrate further into departments and internal systems

• Use in PR, marketing and customer service as part of official channel mix



Metrics for successThis enables us to gauge success at each stage and

determine if our social media investment should be moved forward

• Interaction

• No. of Followers/Fans

• Depth of conversation

• Effectiveness

• Feedback: Helpful or not helpful?

• Productivity

• How many tweets responded to

• Marketing effectiveness

• No. of clickthroughs and resultant purchases



Overview of costsWeb-based platform has few set up costs

• Manpower

• PPI for one external hire: $50k

• Consultancy: $15-500k

• Analytic Technology

• Nielsen BuzzMetrics: $42k+/yr and upwards

• Cost of creating new department

• Set up computer systems

• Overhead costs

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Moving forward and next steps

• Social media is a powerful tool

• Customers are potentially willing to engage with us

• BA can benefit with some investment

We will be meeting the Digital Innovations department at Waterside tomorrow to develop this further

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Travel

BA Social Media Final Presentation