Week 9: #QantasLuxury Twitter backfire

Social media provides two way communication and collaboration for organisations while utilising it to great success building tool. If engaged poorly, social media could lead to miss an opportunity and lead to variety of risks.  A single public failure could affect the overall reputation of the organisation. 

Qantas founded in the Queensland outback in 1920 is Australia’s largest domestic and international airlines services. Registered originally as the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited (QANTAS), it is one of the world’s leading long distance airlines. Qantas is also one of the strongest brands in Australia. 

Qantas is also strongly connected to social media. Its social media pages have thousands of followers connected through their Facebook,   Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media pages providing information about company’s offers, travel deals and more. The official Qantas Twitter page is used to share information and get feedback from the customers about the services.  

Few years back, Qantas launched a campaign on their Twitter page. The campaign was about a competition to win one of 50 pairs of Qantas first-class pyjamas and amenity kits. Qantas asked user to use hash tag #QantasLuxury and express their views on “dream luxury inflight experience” would be. 

@QantasAirways To enter tell us 'What is your dream luxury inflight experience? (Be creative!) Answer must include #QantasLuxury.TCs qantas.com.au/travel/airline…

Within an hour, the hashtag #QantasLuxury was trending across the Australia, but the tweets weren’t as expected by the management.  Due to Qantas ongoing industrial relationship dispute with its workers, passengers were not happy with their services.  The entire fleet of Qantas was grounded few days back and due to this reason, passengers faced several problems to commute. 

The backfire was then taken on Qantas official Twitter #Hashtag campaign.  Though many of the tweets were sarcastic, most tweets were from the unhappy passengers who had experienced the disruption by industrial action and with the current state of the airlines.

@timwattsau#qantasluxury was being abandoned at Heathrow for 4 days in the snow with no customer support while trying to get home to 8mo pregnant wife! 

 @davidheth#qantasluxury is sitting on the tarmac for 90mins staring at a full-page SMH ad claiming "We're back on schedule!". Then returning to gate.

 @2FBS#QantasLuxury is dressing your staff in t-shirts that say "We're Sorry" and believing that makes up for missing a friends funeral.

 @KathyReid#QantasLuxury "Still calling Australia home" even after you've driven the airline into the ground to offshore it.

Within few hours there were many tweets coming from the Twitter users either making fun of the airlines or blaming directly and indirectly to Qantas airline management. This social media backfire was bad for the business of Qantas. Dozens of tweets were coming every minute.

They include

Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire #qantasluxury

#QantasLuxury is a complimentary cheap hotel room because your cynical airway left you stranded in Adelaide, of all places. Adelaide.
#QantasLuxury is a massive executive bonus while your workers starve and your former customers choke
My idea for #QantasLuxury is not having cabin crew lie to my face about my electronic devices and their safety on a plane.
Couriers to make sure my staff around the world get their lockout notices any hour of the day or night #qantasluxury
More than 3mins notice that the whole service has been grounded #QantasLuxury
A ‘Full service’ airline that gives apples or cookies for flights between 11am and 3pm #NoLunchForYou
A plane that doesnt have an exploding engine! #QantasLuxury
My #QantasLuxury experience would be no matter what time or duration of the flight a proper meal is served a cookie is not a meal its a joke
Flights that leave on schedule because Management doesn’t arbitrarily shut down the airline #QantasLuxury
Planes that arrive intact and on time because they’re staffed and maintained by properly paid, Australia-based personnel.
#qantasluxury having a skybed so “superior in its class” you have to be under 5 foot to be able to use it with your legs straight.
#QantasLuxury? 1. Plane takes off/arrives on time; 2. Baggage delivered promptly. This used to be called #QantasService
#qantasluxury – is not being told you can apply for refund online & finding out they only refund via a phone # that no one answers for 4hrs
#qantasluxury is the dream world Alan Joyce lives in where all the feedback to the Qantas action has been positive.

 

The consequences of this action were losing in reputation of the company.  Social media is a powerful tool; it could either help grow business or could create problems. 

Managing risk is the best practise. Qantas could have managed this risk to avoid such public stigma. To avoid such impacts in future, Qantas social media management team should adopt a comprehensive social media strategy to promote their business.  The public relations team should engage in company’s social media sites to unsure what is being posted and communicated with rest of the world. Ultimately, Qantas should create a culture in the organisation where everyone is aware to protect the business and maintain the brand.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please let me know what Qantas could have done to avoid such misuse in the comments section below.

Week 8: ROI in Social Technology

Return of investment (ROI) plays a fundamental goal of any business enterprise.  Though the term didn’t really gain much focus until 1960s. As this Google Ngram  chart shows, since then the term “ROI” has gained much popularity. 

So why was this sudden increase in popularity? It is clear that getting a return of one’s investment was always been the topic of discussion among the business-minded. But might be the term used to refer ROI was differentt: Return of Capital (ROC). When checked in this Google Ngram shows that ROI gained popularity as ROC was aging. Meanwhile, another term similar to ROI, “bang for the buck” began to gain popularity with ROI. 

What is ROI?

According to Investopedia, ROI is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. In simple words, there’s a formula to figure out the ROI.  Consider the gain from investment and subtract the cost of investment. For instance, if there’s an investment of $100 to make up $150, then there’s a profit $50, and this profit when divided my $100 gives an ROI of $0.50 or 50%.

In terms of Social technology implementation, social marketing of the business is the solution. With an estimate of about 1.7 billion users worldwide, the need to raise social media in commercial enterprise is a new way to engage with existing and potential new customer. To analysis further, consider an enterprise Hewlett-Packard who used social technology tool LinkedIn to promote there products and services.

Hewlett-Packard an American multinational information technology corporation provides hardware, software, products, technologies, solutions and services to customers, small and medium sized businesses and to large enterprises. Hewlett Packard’s social media team used LinkedIn for expanding social capabilities globally to:

•   Promote HP brand, products, and services (Tangible benefit)

•   Generate strong customer engagement and conversation of HP products and services. (Tangible benefit)

•   Support HP customers quickly. (Tangible /Intangible Benefit)

According to LinkedIn HP case study, HP was the first company to get 1 million followers on its LinkedIn page. There were Discussion groups set up for small business that has at least 5,500 members who actively engaged in discussion, communicate with other groups and recommend HP products. The video below explains on how it was successful.

Director of digital strategy at HP, Larry Nelson, says, “We were looking for new ways to use social media to engage our commercial clients when LinkedIn approached us with an opportunity called ‘Company Pages,’ which provides an HP-branded environment within the LinkedIn community. It’s essential for our content to be available anywhere, anytime, in communities where our customers and prospects congregate.”

About LinkedIn Company Page launched in November, 2010, enables members to post recommendations of HP products and services to their peers.  Each recommendation is automatically communicated to recommenders LinkedIn network, also appearing on the HP Company Page. By this, those who are interested, could communicate on HP Company page and get feedbacks on HP products and services.

Using recommendations from trusted peers, HP was able to connect customers in professional business. Posting discussions on LinkedIn was success and helped drive customer advocacy in the small and large business enterprise. The number of recommendations was growing naturally, HP started to run paid campaign to quickly build a demanding mass for recommendations.

HP launched Recommendation Ads campaign for promoting their products and services.  These ads (shown above) featured actual LinkedIn members who endorsed HP products.  This encouraged LinkedIn members to visit HP company page and recommend HP products and services in their network.

The result of campaign exceeded expectations. Since the launch of recommendations ad campaign in December, 2010, in first 2 weeks, over 2,000 LinkedIn professional had recommended HP products and services. 100% return of investment from ads. The tangible and in tangible benefits were:

•         First 2 weeks, 2,000 professional recommended ads.(Tangible benefit)
•         Ads generated over 500,000 viral updates. (LinkedIn) (Intangible benefit)
•      Rise in traffic to HP products and service page increases, almost doubled.   (Tangible benefit)
•         Rise in recommendations from business professionals. (Intangible benefit )
•         20,000 new followers on HP Company page. (LinkedIn) (Tangible Benefit)

This comprehensive ROI analysis was conducted by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions demonstrates the necessity for social technology to enhance the product and services of an enterprise.

Thank you for reading my blog and please a comment below.

Week 7: Social Technology in Retail Sector

Hello,

This week I’ll be talking about retailer using social media technology to enhance their products and services in an innovative way. I choose Walmart, who use different social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest , YouTube and LinkedIn to connect to their customers and to promote their products and services. 

A brief description about the company

Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation that runs chains of department and warehouse stores and one of the largest in retail sector.  The company was founded by Sam Walton  and opened the first Walmart store in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Walmart helps us save money anytime and anywhere through their retail stores, online website and through mobile devices social technology. According to the Walmart’s corporate website, each week around 245 million customers visit 11,000 stores in 27 countries with 71 different banners and ecommerce website in 10 countries. Walmart has made sales of approximately US$473 billion for 2014 fiscal year and they employs around 2.2million associates around the world with 1.2 million in US only.

  

According to company’s corporate website, Walmart is world’s largest, fastest and most dynamic e-commerce organisation. With such a huge business, Walmart brings access of its products to the customers through e-commerce anytime and anywhere. Company’s global e-commerce is based in California’s Silicon Valley and operations based in India and Brazil leads all online and mobile innovation of Walmart. Also company uses best technologies and tools to create a seamless experience for the customers to shop anytime and anywhere using social and mobile tools.

The video below displays how top technology experts suggest and Walmart ecommerce team discusses on how to enhance customers shopping experience in both online and in store.

 

This shows how Walmart is dedicated to use social technology tools to provide service anytime and anywhere through online, store and mobile. 

The social technology Walmart has implemented are social media networks such as like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest , YouTube and LinkedIn to connect to their customers and to promote their products and services. Company’s social network Twitter focuses on providing information major activities, initiatives and promotional events of the products.  Company’s social network Facebook page focuses on reviews and feedbacks; receives lots of interaction and showcase different products and services.  Also there are dedicated Facebook pages for every location My Local Walmart, and can be diverted with just a zip code.  Other social network pages like Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn focusses on providing updates of the company products and services. 

According to McKinsey 10 social technologies value levers, social technologies add value to improve intra- or inter- organizational collaboration and communication. Social technology helps in communication and in turn enhances the collaboration in between the staff and other organisations members. Thus, Walmart could implement a social media platform to communicate and collaborate with similar other retails stores to gain more (noticeable) publicity. This will in turn help to pull more customers from the rival retail store.  Also this collaboration and communication with other retail stores would help Walmart to expand their products and services in the places where they currently don’t have. With this customers can give more feedbacks about the products and services. This could help Walmart to reach more target audience around the world.

 The McKinsey social technology report also explains how social technology can be used to match talent to task. It is very important to use social technology to promote and find future talent for the company. Walmart’s LinkedIn page provides insights of what company is looking for. This page provides all (HOT JOBS ALERTS) updates, specific requirement and position. 

Thank you for reading my blog. If you have any other recommendation, please leave a comment below.