The secret to American Airlines' customer service success on Twitter
Skift Take
American's social media team has accomplished something impressive by making the airline look good despite the challenges the airline faces both from within and without.
Outside of manning the Internal Revenue Service complaint line, there are doubtless few tasks as thankless as managing customer service issues on social networks for a major airline. As the public face of the airline, you're the constant target of complaints when things go wrong or simply don't go right enough.
American Airlines has its own extra set of issues beyond the typical challenges airlines face: It's still in bankruptcy, it's planes suffered from headline-grabbing maintenance issues this fall, and the rift between its executives and rank-and-file employees makes the Cold War look warm.
Yet somehow its social media team -- especially the people manning the Twitter handle @AmericanAir -- manages to show up every day and deal with complaints and comments without heading off the deep end. The airlines' dedicated, in-house team of fifteen focuses on quickly dealing with customers' problems or responding to praises and complaints when there is big news -- like last week's redesign.
Following last week's launch of SkiftSocial, Stephanie Scott, a Social Media Specialist at the airline, agreed to share some of the team's secrets.
>> Read more about SkiftSocial here, and what it means for social media monitoring in the travel industry.
[caption id="attachment_48567" align="alignright" width="337"] How American Airline
