We actually monitor forums quite closely and there is regular scheduled internal reporting on key online issues of note. The contributions here and FT have contributed to some changes, both in the Customer Experience and Qantas Frequent Flyer spheres. Whilst Red Roo may not comment on all issues, you would probably be surp
You allow me to segue into a good issue here - which is closing the feedback loop.
As someone who has to preach & teach people about the virtues of social media, one of my core teachings is that customers value business who close the feedback loop.
Even if the company might not be able to do something about it, the fact the business has responded and at said they have heard your concerns is quite comforting. It also demonstrates a level of honesty and care which adds value to how the customer sees the business.
As we frequent flyers should know, some companies have taken closing the feedback loop to new extremes - by intergrating feedback response with line of business activities. We have the earlier example by
pshepvic, how a tweet to Starwood saw an issue resolved promptly.
I also know of others in the hotel industry such as Marriott, where an acquaintance of mine was staying at Marriott on the Park Sydney where he had an reasonable issue with his room. There didn't seem to be much impetus to fix this problem by lobby staff, and a polite tweet quickly put paid to these problems.
Back to airlines, we have the work that Delta has been doing to bring value to pax through social media,
explained in reasonable detail by Cranky Flyer in his article of September last year (Note: He was a guest of Delta touring their operations at the time when it was written). When asked how they were measuring the effectiveness and success of their social media response, they said:
- Fewer complaints
- Fewer calls into the reservations center
Allison Ausband, VP of Reservations for Delta that the response has been phenomenal.
The group tells customers that “someone’s listening in cyberspace and there’s a human behind it.” In other words, it gives a human face to a generally impersonal process.
Getting back to the point - I would profer that QF has significant opportunities through fora such as these and social media channels to improve customer perception and happiness - all by providing prompt, official feedback and responses.
Now I don't know what corporate politics and issues
Red Roo has to deal with in their posting here let alone issues of X-in-confidence, but it would be great if they could pass that information back to us in some form which doesn't give things away to their competition.
And having said that, this forum is ripe for them to 'start the conversation'. Sure, QF has access to their existing formal and informal feedback channels, but why not ask the questions they're wanting to ask their customers here. After all, this is an active community and there's nothing stopping QF and
Red Roo starting a thread asking 'your thoughts about X'.
They could easily posting their relevant announcments in the news threads on improvments/changes (and beating our members to the punch), of course not before any media embargos have expired. A simple content posting, that takes no more than 5min work, but shows that the airline is trying to keep its loyal customers as informed as possible about what's happening.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on the topic over and done with. I don't know if
Red Roo will be permitted to chime in on some of these thoughts of closing the feedback loop with us, but I know they'll at least be reading it and hopefully thinking about how they could impliment some of these simple, no cost solutions to improve customer perception.
