Companies afraid of communicating with consumers in public
By Darren Cronian on Friday, April 25th, 2008

It’s not that often that I rave about airlines but I am impressed with Southwest Airlines who are using Twitter to great effect. It takes confidence to open up communication channels online and allow consumers to complain publically about their experiences.

Travel companies are afraid of communicating with consumers in public

From reading Twitter tonight I found a small number of passengers have complained about their service, the airline respond, apologising, advising passengers and generally making sure that the customer is satisfied with the outcome.

It is a shame that many travel companies do not trust their own brand and services enough to allow consumers to communicate with them publicly. I’d like to see more companies communicating with consumers by creating communication channels like travel blogs, forums on their own websites.

Does anyone agree / disagree, and why?


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4 responses to “Companies afraid of communicating with consumers in public”

Karen Bryan | 26 April, 2008 at 12:45 pm

I think that travel companies should enthusiastically embrace communications with consumers as consumers will make positive or negative comments in other forums such as Trip Advisor in any case so It’s better for a company to provide a forum themselves open to communication in which both satisfied and dissatisfied consumers can air their opinions.

To me it’s evidence that travel companies take providing customer satisfaction seriously especially in a forum such as Twitter where the companies can’t moderate the comments.

They always say you can judge how good a company is by the way it deals with dissatisfied customers.

Do you think Ryanair will take up the challenge?

Darren Cronian | 26 April, 2008 at 4:33 pm

@ Karen

Great points. Yes, let consumers complain in your own community where you can monitor and moderate if needs be. Even so, free speech needs to be allowed, and that’s what I try and do on Travel Rants.

As for Ryanair - I cannot see them opening up such communication channels. If they do, I will run naked around Leicester square, which will not be a pretty sight, but it’s how confident I am that it’ll never happen.

Amanda Kendle | 27 April, 2008 at 9:54 am

Absolutely agree. Last week I found a hotel that has management give a response to every single review that guests leave on TripAdvisor (it’s an Australian hotel, the Rydges Sabaya and that totally impressed me. The response doesn’t change anything for those who’ve had a bad experience but it does make it sound like they actually care. Should be more of it!

Darren Cronian | 27 April, 2008 at 4:08 pm

@ Amanda

That’s great to hear. I remember a work colleague telling me that the hotel she stayed in near Manchester airport, offered her a free bottle of wine when she stayed again if she left a review on Trip Advisor, good or bad.

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