How Southwest Airlines Uses Response Time to Gain Competitive Advantage on Twitter
For every dollar that can be removed by re-engineering costs and time out, several more can be saved by rethinking how to use speed to serve customers better and competitively reposition the company — George Stalk
Southwest Airlines is the third largest airline in the U.S with over 140 million enplaned passengers in 2015* and 2 million followers on their Twitter handle running 24/7 on #SouthwestHeart
In this fifth edition of the HelpHandles Insight Series we take a close look at how Southwest Airlines focuses on response time to gain competitive advantage over Twitter.
Summary
A fast response time is the secret weapon for any business looking to satisfy their customers, and out of the top four US airlines, Southwest have positioned themselves as the fastest to respond to customers on Twitter.
Over the last 4 weeks, we have benchmarked the social customer service performance of the four largest US airlines: American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines on Twitter.
Here’s what we found.
First Response Time
In today’s current on-demand economy, response time has never been more crucial to ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty.
From our analysis, Southwest Airlines have been the clear leader in overall response times, reaching out to connect with customers on Twitter with a first response time of 16 minutes.
Average Response Time
We don’t really like averages, but Southwest Airlines have responded to customers on average in 15 minutes.
If we take a view across all four airlines we can see that Delta follow a close second, consistently performing around the 26 min mark, achieving sub 30 min response times on Twitter, with American Air hitting 36 mins and United lagging behind with response times of just under 2 hours.
Inbound Volume
Over the last 4-weeks, Southwest Airlines received a total of 27,554 mentions to their Twitter handle…
Response Rate
…and responded to (24%) 6,613 of total inbound mentions…
Responses Under 30 mins
….of which (90%) 5,801 mentions were responded to in under 30 mins.
Transfarency
Southwest Airlines are also pioneering new ways to stay ahead of the competition with a new transparent pricing strategies. With the introduction of their new ‘Transfarency’ campaign Southwest Airlines have differentiated themselves from their competitors on price as well as responsiveness.
The dedicated transfarency micro site offers a number of interactive features to encourage engagement over social media. You can join in a game of ‘Fee or Fake’, share a pledge to Southwest’s free baggage charges, or check out some tips and tricks with the ‘Fee Hacker’.
It’s pretty awesome.
Listening to Customers
In addition to promoting engagement, Southwest Airlines invest in listening to what their customers are saying over social media with a comprehensive Listening Center at the heart of their 24/7 customer service operation. The Listening Center is operated with staff from across Communications, Customer relations and Marketing functions to assist customers at any point in time during their travel journeys.
Conclusion
Keeping up with the real-time nature of customer service over Twitter is by no means easy and Southwest Airlines work hard to position themselves as a company that focuses on responsiveness and engagement as core KPI’s for meeting the demands of their customers on Twitter. Their approach to transparent pricing is refreshing, and we feel that by combining a more transparent approach to their social customer service performance could create an unbeatable game changing proposition in this fiercely competitive and service orientated industry.
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For indicative purposes all metric analyses have been conducted over a period of 4 weeks from (29/08/2016–26/09/2016) Accounts are programmatically scored out of 100 for performance across 4 metrics. Inbound mention volumes (25%), Response Rate (25%), Responses under 30 mins (25%) and Sentiment (25%). All metrics are available and updated every 15 mins on HelpHandles.com
