Re: The Alan Davies Affair
<puts on resident social media expert cap, as bestowed by
simongr>
They would have picked up on this because Davies used the #qantas hash tag, and they would presumably regularly check up on what's being said using that tag. Unlike the disastrous #qantasluxury affair, they've dealt with this entirely appropriately so far.
Partial credit, and a two part answer coming.
On your suggestions of #qantasluxury being a disaster
I've
previously and comprehensibly addressed my views on this - and again it wasn't one by any stretch of the imagination. I will however add that due to the sheer volume of tweets on #qantasluxury there was simply no way to address them all - let alone respond to a comedian who was having a joke at the carrier's expense. Not exactly anything actionable the airline could have done with Anderson's and ors. tweets.
The Davies situation is quite a different matter, in that he's specifically alleged a staff member of the carrier used offensive language towards him and by proxy his child by being in close proximity. This complaint is something that is tangible and actionable, and the company has the power to address it to make good with the passenger & improve things in their house.
A parallel would be better drawn to the Stephen Fry situation, in that he left his wallet onboard when his A380 diverted tech to DXB. Again, this is something that is actionable (reuniting pax with wallet and important documents), and improve things in their house (remind pax to take such items with them if ever departing in a port for non-emergency reasons).
On how they would have caught this
Any company using Social Media who's worth something will be monitoring a whole range of tags, keywords, product-relevant phrases, names, combinations, as well as common misspellings for same.
Also, Qantas uses a social media management package known as
Radian6* - which is the Rolls Royce product and makes corporate social media people go weak at the knees.
This would likely have detected not only the original tweet, but also the high number of re-tweets of the post when these started to happen. It can The package would, assuming rules are correctly set, have fired off an alert to the relevant team member warning them something was brewing and needed attention.
Further, the package would have garnered metrics and information about the user making the original tweet from the various systems for social media that measure user influence (ie
Klout,
Kred and
PeerIndex) to determine just how influential this person is. It is in a way the application of the same upgrade priority principals within Aleta to the social media environment.
Now I'm not suggesting that QF's social media team prioritise their responses so that only the important people hear from them - far from it. I both know and have seen that QF endeavours to respond to and engage with everyone who mentions them, who needs assistance, and does so as fast as the fingers of the team will allow them to. It's just that these systems allow companies to detect when something is getting big - and maybe divert focus to it for a while (when it's actionable and fixable) to head it off at the pass.
* yes, it even has bugs and engineering defects - much like the Trent 900 on VH-OQA, but that wasn't the reason I referenced RR here no matter how inside baseball humorous it might be. It was the old axiom of the assumed quality that comes with the brand and product.
You have to consider as well that on the flpside if Davies is shown to be an a** and DYKWIA he will suffer a reputational loss as well - particularly significant given the target demos of QI - so I doubt he'd have done so willy nilly. There's undoubtedly a differing view from both sides, so I'd imagine that from here on out it's in the interests of both parties to sort things out quickly and relatively quietly.
Davis has a larger audience than just the Qi crowd, specially with his comic work and weekly TV drama (ie Jonathan Creek).
Will they sort it out quickly - absolutely. QF social media would likely have already spoken with Reservations and obtained his PNR, spoken with the Airport Manager at the inbound base; requested they coordinate and gather all the relevant information, and get back to them ASAP to find out what is wrong. From there, QF's existing customer service policies would kick in, with on-ground staff contacting the pax in question and making things right (as well as any HR processes arising from the incident).
The question is if QF will publish what they have done on their social media channels. My view is they should as part of closing the feedback loop, and drawing a clear line under the incident.
