When Delta looked to get involved in social media, they faced an uphill battle. The existing conversation was overwhelmingly negative, and nobody out there was telling Delta’s side or helping their customers.
Delta knew they’d have to build credibility to join the conversation, so Rachael Rensink, Jerry Fletcher and their team started with a focus on customer service. Hundreds of happy customers later, they’re now using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs for both customer service and marketing.
In their recent BlogWell case study, Rensink and Fletcher walked through the evolution of their social program. A few of their big takeaways:
- Look to the people who already know how to help customers. After considering outsourcing this to a PR firm, Delta ultimately decided to use their internal talent that already had experience helping customers — their own customer service reps. Immediately they began getting responses on Twitter like “You sound human!” and “There’s actually someone who cares!”
- Customer service hours are different than corporate business hours. During their initial launch, Delta only offered customer service in social channels during their corporate business hours. But after listening to feedback from the community, they expanded to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Take the handcuffs off. Initially, customer service reps were only handling easy questions and directing the rest to other channels. But soon, these reps said they could do much more — and they’ve since been freed to do just that. Today, they can help you with everything from rebooking a flight to letting you know what kind of hummus they serve.
Watch Rensink and Fletcher’s case study (and see their slides here):