SimpliFlying has been talking about the inevitable evolution, if not revolution, in airline/airport customer service following the increase in social media usage by travelers. Today, we’re glad to say that the revolution is finally here. Customer service 2.0 is now a stark reality, and should soon be a pressing need for airlines and airports the world over. Let’s begin by introducing a young lady from AirAsia previously featured in our Customer Service Top 10 who’s at the forefront of this immense change.

 
She’s little, she’s a miss, and she’s red… care to guess who she is?

She’s Lil’ Miss Red, and she’s Air Asia’s Customer Service “ambassador” as well as the core element of the AskAirAsia customer service website.  From now on she will also increasingly become the Air Asia customer service agent as the airline has announced that it will close two of its customer service hotlines in a move towards what it calls its “on-going mission… to utilize technology and practice cost efficiency as well as promoting full automation and self service via the airline’s online channels”.

Although it might seem as just another cost-cutting measure, the …

A few weeks ago we published an article reviewing the new Facebook Timeline for brands and taking a look at how its new features could be used by airlines.  When that article was published 27 of the 30 days of the facebook adjustment period had already passed, and few airlines had made the switch.

Now that the adjustment period is over, we’ve decided to take a look at how airlines and airports have adjusted to the new layout and we’ve created this Top 10 deck featuring the Top 5 examples of Airline pages followed by the Top 5 Airport Pages.

During our research we were positively surprised by the quality of the work done by both airline and airport Facebook teams. However, sometimes we were disappointed to see how some companies appeared to be unaware of the change and had not adapted their Pages. Furthermore, especially on the airport side, we noticed that many companies had created beautiful cover images but had not filled their Timelines, leaving the very useful “milestone” feature almost unused.

Note: The airlines portion of this Top 10 was created adapting a guest post we wrote for Tnooz.

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Editor’s Note: Here’s another guest post by Peter Claridge of Unmetric, an exclusive aviation partner of SimpliFlying. Unmetric is a social media benchmarking company that helps brands analyse how well they’re doing on social media by including in-depth insights into numerous metrics as well as information on what kind of content “works” and how competitors are faring. Among Unmetric’s list of illustrious clients are Citibank, Nestlé and AirTel.

In many respects, Facebook takes the limelight when it comes to looking at how an airline is engaging with the community. However, over the past couple of years Twitter has inadvertently become the public helpdesk for brands around the world. Many airlines have been quick to establish a presence here to ensure that where ever there are questions and praise (and to some extent, complaints) a representative is there is respond in 140 characters.

US airlines, like many other US brands, have been quick to build their Twitter teams and are blazing a trail for many other global airlines to follow. SimpliFlying and Unmetric decided to dig a little deeper using the Unmetric platform to see if there is a clear leader or whether all airlines are doing a similar job. We collected and analyzed the …

On 11th August, the pilots of Delta and Northwest agreed to the proposed merger between the two airlines, smoothing out the way for a new world’s largest airline to emerge. What does this mean for American and international commercial aviation world? A peek into history may give us some insights.

The glory of Pan-Am
The decline and demise of Pan-American World Airways in 1991 marked the end of an era in United States. Pan-Am was, for many decades, the de-facto flag carrier of the United States with an extensive international work. It was arguably the creation of American politics in the pre-deregulated industry before the early 1980s, as the airline flew international routes while other airlines were largely restricted to domestic routes.

For over three decades after the Second World War, Pan-Am held the stature as the leading international airline in terms of innovative products, as well as opulence in luxury travel, ushering in the jet age by launching the Boeing 707 in 1959, the iconic Boeing 747 in 1969 and record-breaking non-stops between New York and Tokyo, and Los Angeles and Sydney with the Boeing 747SP in 1976. Pan-Am also …

I wonder what it would be like to take a flight on the new Northwelta from Boston to Singapore via Detroit and Tokyo on a Boeing 747, once the US$17 billion merger between Northwest and Delta comes through. Will I get the Northwest experience or a predominantly Delta one, a mish-mash or none?
There’s been a lot of chatter around the merger, though more negative than positive (check out the one by Center for Asia Pacific Aviation for a different view). But I’ve hardly read anything about how the merger would affect the brand. Even though the new airline (largest in the US with over 70,000 employees) will be operated under the Delta name, which currently doesn’t have any 747s and also doesn’t fly to Asia Pacific, the brand experience can certainly be enhanced to make the sum greater than the parts combined….