Any Qantas Angels on here?

[Bofter]

I thought this was an interesting approach.

“We have a group of people who love social media who we call the young Qantas Angels,” Ms Wirth said.

“There are about 250 of them. They have gone through social media training. If there is a crisis and we need more people on social media, we bring them in and they join the room with our social media team.”

Read more: Why the Qantas media team needs you
​

 

[MelUser]

Yes - Red Roo is one of these.

 

[Red Roo]

Not sure about "young"...but I'll take it!

 

[SeatBackForward]

I thought this was an interesting approach.

“We have a group of people who love social media who we call the young Qantas Angels,” Ms Wirth said.

“There are about 250 of them. They have gone through social media training. If there is a crisis and we need more people on social media, we bring them in and they join the room with our social media team.”

Read more: Why the Qantas media team needs you
​

What are they doing the other times? and if a crisis happens, wouldn't they be better off doing what they are otherwise doing - that probably helps deal with the crisis?

 

[Bofter]

Yes - Red Roo is one of these.

I don't doubt that Red Roo is an angel, but I'd always thought of him/her as more permenant/full-time than the group referred to in the article.

 

[RooFlyer]

This appears to be an initiative of Qantas Marketing and appears to be directed towards 'managing the message' after some crisis. I imagine all they could do is respond with some sort of script to stop a contagion of bad news for the company or counter blatantly false stories.

Good luck to then on this - its no doubt worth doing; anything that can retard the sewage that can flow through Twotter etc is good.

I look forward to Qantas Operations saying that they are arranging more back-up support for customers when there is a 'crisis', or even in the event of such things as cancelled flights where they suddenly have hundreds of stranded passengers on their hands, probably needing accommodation.

 

[Bofter]

I look forward to Qantas Operations saying that they are arranging more back-up support for customers when there is a 'crisis', or even in the event of such things as cancelled flights where they suddenly have hundreds of stranded passengers on their hands, probably needing accommodation.

Presumably this new angel service will be additional to actually organising the alternate flights and accommodation and not instead of! My preference would be to have communication with someone who can actually tell me what is happening and do something to help, so hopefully the angels are empowered to do more than reel off a simple script.

 

[dajop]

What are they doing the other times? and if a crisis happens, wouldn't they be better off doing what they are otherwise doing - that probably helps deal with the crisis?

To be a devil's advocate, take a marketing or finance analyst sitting in Mascot - how is "doing what they are otherwise doing" going to help dealing with a crisis like QF32? Or even a plane going out of service at LAX?

 

[SeatBackForward]

To be a devil's advocate, take a marketing or finance analyst sitting in Mascot - how is "doing what they are otherwise doing" going to help dealing with a crisis like QF32? Or even a plane going out of service at LAX?

The linked article in the first post says "Ms Wirth has a marketing team that is dedicated to managing social media content that engages in conversations with users on various platforms – and the broader Qantas workforce can also be involved.

“We have a group of people who love social media who we call the young Qantas Angels,” Ms Wirth said.

So your playing advocate may be correct, I assume the young reference would also suggest that these Angels aren't the senior reps from respective departments either.

I guess the point I was trying to make, and others have also mentioned is, wouldn't it be wiser to get these "surplus" staff to deal with the issue itself, rather than the marketing around it. If you can sort out the issue, the marketing should take care of itself anyhow.

 

[dajop]

wouldn't it be wiser to get these "surplus" staff to deal with the issue itself, rather than the marketing around it. If you can sort out the issue, the marketing should take care of itself anyhow.

But the point is that the marketing is necessary. How many "issues" become issues simply because of social media, not because of the issue per se? Ten years ago stuff happened and we dealt with it, now the slightest hiccup and its all over twitter and/or facebook. And I still think it's best to have operational staff sort out operational issues.

 

[SeatBackForward]

And I still think it's best to have operational staff sort out operational issues.

Agreed, but you can't have the numbers of operational staff to meet peak demand, so the surplus in this case, rather being trained in handling some sort of operational issues, are instead, responding to tweets and firing off generic email responses?

 

[dajop]

Agreed, but you can't have the numbers of operational staff to meet peak demand, so the surplus in this case, rather being trained in handling some sort of operational issues, are instead, responding to tweets and firing off generic email responses?

I think you need two sets of people - one trained in dealing with operational issues, others to deal with social media. Handling both ineptly can (in theory) damage the brand. Although I do think these days twitter is becoming more and more like the proverbial boy who cried wolf, and negative tweets are not doing as much damage to brands as some social media commentators would have us believe.

 

[yohy?!]

This appears to be an initiative of Qantas Marketing and appears to be directed towards 'managing the message' after some crisis. I imagine all they could do is respond with some sort of script to stop a contagion of bad news for the company or counter blatantly false stories.

Good luck to then on this - its no doubt worth doing; anything that can retard the sewage that can flow through Twotter etc is good.

I look forward to Qantas Operations saying that they are arranging more back-up support for customers when there is a 'crisis', or even in the event of such things as cancelled flights where they suddenly have hundreds of stranded passengers on their hands, probably needing accommodation.

I agree, there is a place for this in managing damaging direct customer feedback by providing follow up and accurate information.

What I don't like is the idea that Qantas would for example be using these people as shills to try and circumvent or reshape valid complaints and discussion on social media instead of just fixing the problems.