When the twitterverse turns on you sympathize and rebuild a customer-oriented image Yu ZhAo 15307110321 Course: English for Academic Purposes(Business) Date: 5 January, 2018
When the Twitterverse turns on you: sympathize and rebuild a customer-oriented image Yu ZHAO 15307110321 Course: English for Academic Purposes (Business) Date: 5 January, 2018
When the Twitterverse turns on you sympathize and rebuild a customer-oriented company image Yu zhao,15307110321 Canadian Jet, an airline company, faced public relationship(Pr)crisis regarding cancellations, delays and crew strike six months ago. To save its public image Canadian Jet launched a Twitter contest: people who posted the most creative tweet under hashtag CanJetluxury would win two round-trip tickets within the companys destinations. However, the tweet contest has gone bad since people were starting to post negative opinions targeting the company. The company's CEO Jenny Schneider, head of public relations Charlene, Charlene's director of social media Tim Powell, and account manager from the company's PR firm Andrea Kemp were having a meeting to resolve this issue Different parties proposed diverse solutions. Tim suggested using a new hashtag to draw attention from the old one. This proposal was used by McDonald and was proven a success. Charlene offered advice on ending the campaign altogether However, JP Morgan had used the same strategy and failed. Tim reminded the rest that they could apologize on twitter like they did three years ago. The method was a great success when customers were inpatient due to delay; but in this case, there was nothing to apologize for. Andrea with her Pr insights and previous experience, on the other hand, thought that this was hardly a crisis. The media was stepping in. This issue required an immediate decision from the company: what would be the next move of Canadian Jet regarding the twitter campaign Analysis The case can be inspected from an"external internal perspective. The advent of new media has brought new challenges that should be considered in a PR crisis Therefore, an overall analysis of the whole" Twitter"atmosphere is crucial for laying groundwork for further analysis. After analyzing the medium, Canadian Jets current and ideal public image will be examined to work out a feasible solution for rebuilding
1 When the Twitterverse turns on you: sympathize and rebuild a customer-oriented company image Yu Zhao, 15307110321 Canadian Jet, an airline company, faced public relationship (PR) crisis regarding cancellations, delays and crew strike six months ago. To save its public image, Canadian Jet launched a Twitter contest: people who posted the most creative tweet under hashtag #CanJetLuxury would win two round-trip tickets within the company’s destinations. However, the tweet contest has gone bad since people were starting to post negative opinions targeting the company. The company’s CEO Jenny Schneider, head of public relations Charlene, Charlene's director of social media Tim Powell, and account manager from the company’s PR firm Andrea Kemp were having a meeting to resolve this issue. Different parties proposed diverse solutions. Tim suggested using a new hashtag to draw attention from the old one. This proposal was used by McDonald' and was proven a success. Charlene offered advice on ending the campaign altogether. However, JP Morgan had used the same strategy and failed. Tim reminded the rest that they could apologize on Twitter like they did three years ago. The method was a great success when customers were inpatient due to delay; but in this case, there was nothing to apologize for. Andrea with her PR insights and previous experience, on the other hand, thought that this was hardly a crisis. The media was stepping in. This issue required an immediate decision from the company: what would be the next move of Canadian Jet regarding the Twitter campaign. Analysis The case can be inspected from an “external – internal” perspective. The advent of new media has brought new challenges that should be considered in a PR crisis. Therefore, an overall analysis of the whole “Twitter” atmosphere is crucial for laying groundwork for further analysis. After analyzing the medium, Canadian Jet’s current and ideal public image will be examined to work out a feasible solution for rebuilding
their ideal i New social media has altered the way business and communication is managed New characteristics of social media require more thorough examination and faster peed when handling PR crisis ser segmentation is required when campaigning on Twitter. Unlike traditional media where articles are written by professional journalists guided by specific rinciples and value, writers in the new media age(including forum, blogs, Facebook and Twitter) are like"freelancers"with contracts only to themselves. People do not have to be an expert when posting their opinion, in this way the new media welcomes people from different values, attitudes, SES and walks of life. Same applies to the case of Canadian Jet. Different strategies would apply to different segments of angry customers. For example, it is necessary to distinguish between business elite who take Canadian Jet several times a week and those loyal customers who are irritated by one extremely bad experience. Besides, it could be possible that opponent companies are hiring navy (k4)to deliberately hijack the hashtag. Canadian Jet needs a clear picture of the percentage of positive/negative tweets, as well as who indeed posted negative feedback on Twitter. Distinguished solutions could target these three segments of users respectively, and new machine learning algorithm allows such segmentation without much human labor by "learning" the general behavior pattern of different groups of people The battlefield of Twitter requires an action in less than 24 hours while a decade ago, notorious customer complaints on blogs took I month to break out, today, it took less than I day on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. This requires fast action, because a late response signals"guilty and"not transparent", devastating customer trust Furthermore, Canadian Jet could identify the gap between its current public image and ideal image, so that it could implement action to bridge the gap. Image could be segmented into“ corporate behavior”," customer behavior”and“ customer attitude". Canadian Jet could use their current behavior and corresponding customer ang, Augustine, Nasrath Begam Binte Abul Hassan, and Aaron Chee Yang Chong. " Negotiating crisis in the social media environment: Evolution of crises online, gaining credibility offline Corporate Communications: Al International Journal 19.1(2014): 96-118
2 their ideal image. New social media has altered the way business and communication is managed. New characteristics of social media require more thorough examination and faster speed when handling PR crisis. User segmentation is required when campaigning on Twitter. Unlike traditional media where articles are written by professional journalists guided by specific principles and value, writers in the new media age (including forum, blogs, Facebook and Twitter) are like “freelancers” with contracts only to themselves. People do not have to be an expert when posting their opinion, in this way the new media welcomes people from different values, attitudes, SES and walks of life. Same applies to the case of Canadian Jet. Different strategies would apply to different segments of angry customers. For example, it is necessary to distinguish between business elite who take Canadian Jet several times a week and those loyal customers who are irritated by one extremely bad experience. Besides, it could be possible that opponent companies are hiring navy (水军) to deliberately hijack the hashtag. Canadian Jet needs a clear picture of the percentage of positive/negative tweets, as well as who indeed posted negative feedback on Twitter. Distinguished solutions could target these three segments of users respectively, and new machine learning algorithm allows such segmentation without much human labor by “learning” the general behavior pattern of different groups of people. The battlefield of Twitter requires an action in less than 24 hours. While a decade ago, notorious customer complaints on blogs took 1 month to break out, today, it took less than 1 day on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube1 . This requires fast action, because a late response signals “guilty” and “not transparent”, devastating customer trust. Furthermore, Canadian Jet could identify the gap between its current public image and ideal image, so that it could implement action to bridge the gap. Image could be segmented into “corporate behavior”, “customer behavior” and “customer attitude”. Canadian Jet could use their current behavior and corresponding customer 1 Pang, Augustine, Nasrath Begam Binte Abul Hassan, and Aaron Chee Yang Chong. "Negotiating crisis in the social media environment: Evolution of crises online, gaining credibility offline." Corporate Communications: An International Journal 19.1 (2014): 96-118
havior and attitude to deduct a relationship between what they do and"what the customers think,. In this way, Canadian Jet could use its expected customer behavior in ideal and the inferred relationship to guide their next step What their customers think"might be reflected in the tweets. Currently, the Twitter campaign has received a mixture of positive and negative tweets with the majority being positive. This might be credited to its past strategies of wearing"We are sorry" shirts when flights were delayed or cancelled(see Table 1). Mostly smooth flight also gave raise to its good reputation as well. It could be inferred that apology. sympathy and service quality all contribute to a solid reputation. Customers are not passive or ignorant; they want their needs being met and their dissatisfaction being noticed. Schultz and colleagues identified that both apology and sympathy led to higher corporate reputation and produced less harmful secondary crisis communication. On the other hand, customer behavior of posting negative tweets is a recurrence of past PR crisis(see Table 1). This could be avoided if the massive delay and cancellations were handled in a delicate way. all past experience indicate that if Canadian Jet is to restore a trustworthy, customer-oriented image, it should be sincere, with empathy, and it should apologize when necessary and calm down irritated customers in the past crisis Table l Analysis of Canadian Jet public image Corporate Behavior Customer behavior Customer attitude Current Wearing clothes with Mostly positive tweets Mixture of positive printed“ We are with a few negative negative sorry on it when pinions about Bloggers(customers Canadian jet Delay and cancellation from other medium)are of the flights due to ngine satety concerns 2 Schultz, Friederike, Sonja Utz, and Anja Goritz"Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media." Public relations review 37.1(2011): 20-27
3 behavior and attitude to deduct a relationship between “what they do” and “what their customers think”. In this way, Canadian Jet could use its expected customer behavior in ideal and the inferred relationship to guide their next step. “What their customers think” might be reflected in the tweets. Currently, the Twitter campaign has received a mixture of positive and negative tweets with the majority being positive. This might be credited to its past strategies of wearing “We are sorry” shirts when flights were delayed or cancelled (see Table 1). Mostly smooth flight also gave raise to its good reputation as well. It could be inferred that apology, sympathy and service quality all contribute to a solid reputation. Customers are not passive or ignorant; they want their needs being met and their dissatisfaction being noticed. Schultz and colleagues identified that both apology and sympathy led to higher corporate reputation and produced less harmful secondary crisis communication2 . On the other hand, customer behavior of posting negative tweets is a recurrence of past PR crisis (see Table 1). This could be avoided if the massive delays and cancellations were handled in a delicate way. All past experience indicate that if Canadian Jet is to restore a trustworthy, customer-oriented image, it should be sincere, with empathy, and it should apologize when necessary and calm down irritated customers in the past crisis. Table1 Analysis of Canadian Jet public image Corporate Behavior Customer Behavior Customer Attitude Current Image Wearing clothes with printed “We are sorry!” on it when flights are delayed Delay and cancellation of the flights due to engine safety concerns Mostly positive tweets with a few negative ones Bloggers (customers from other medium) are stepping in Mixture of positive and negative opinions about Canadian Jet 2 Schultz, Friederike, Sonja Utz, and Anja Göritz. "Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media." Public relations review 37.1 (2011): 20-27
Ideal (solution here!) Overwhelmingly · Canadian jet is a Ima positive tweets posted trustworthy airline online company Negative reviews does Canadian Jet cares not gc customer experience · Canadian Jet Solution a four ed as a framework for the solut ions: issue management, planning-prevention, crisis and post-crisis. However, the solutions presented here focus mainly on crisis and post-crisis stages Trust should be built in the crisis stage. Sympathy to customers has proven to be a desirable way to solidify reputation, and one way to address sympathy is to post audio and video on the social media. For example, Canadian Jet could post a video with employees wearing"sorry, we are not perfect"shirts addressing customers concern about delays. This helps in replicating past success. However, a mere apology could not be enough, action must be seen taken. Therefore, in this video, several employees wearing" we are working on it! " shirts could set the scene that Canadian Jet listens to and responses to its customers. When innovation and experience combine, Canadian Jet could rebuild its ideal image of a sincere and trustworthy company. Besides, speed is the key element in PR crisis on Twitter, therefore, Canadian Jet should be responding fast In the post-crisis stage, the goal for Canadian Jet is to ensure that this PR crisi would not recur, and to strengthen the image of a customer-oriented company. One way to ensure this does not happen is to monitor the crisis, to build a feedback 3 Alfonso based techn Contingent
4 Ideal Image (solution here!) Overwhelmingly positive tweets posted online Negative reviews does not get attention Canadian Jet is a trustworthy airline company Canadian Jet cares about customer experience Canadian Jet is a first-choice company Solution A four-stage PR model is used as a framework for the solutions: issue management, planning-prevention, crisis and post-crisis3 . However, the solutions presented here focus mainly on crisis and post-crisis stages. Trust should be built in the crisis stage. Sympathy to customers has proven to be a desirable way to solidify reputation, and one way to address sympathy is to post audio and video on the social media. For example, Canadian Jet could post a video with employees wearing “sorry, we are not perfect” shirts addressing customers’ concern about delays. This helps in replicating past success. However, a mere apology could not be enough, action must be seen taken. Therefore, in this video, several employees wearing “we are working on it!” shirts could set the scene that Canadian Jet listens to and responses to its customers. When innovation and experience combine, Canadian Jet could rebuild its ideal image of a sincere and trustworthy company. Besides, speed is the key element in PR crisis on Twitter, therefore, Canadian Jet should be responding fast. In the post-crisis stage, the goal for Canadian Jet is to ensure that this PR crisis would not recur, and to strengthen the image of a customer-oriented company. One way to ensure this does not happen is to monitor the crisis, to build a feedback 3 Alfonso, González‐Herrero, and Smith Suzanne. "Crisis communications management on the web: how internet‐ based technologies are changing the way public relations professionals handle business crises." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 16.3 (2008): 143-153
mechanism under new hashtag #Make Can Better. Canadian Jet could encourage current Twitter users to post under this new hashtag, can work out solutions to tackle the negative comments(see graph 1). Besides, this new hashtag helps Pr department monitor the company's reputation on a minute to minute basis. With sufficient data analysis and machine learning algorithm, Canadian Jet could spot any trending as soon as possible, thus minimizing potential harm Collect Work backs)I solutions to using address the Make CanB etter Make public solutions and show customers that their concerns are being GraphI. Flow chart of using Make Can Better as a long-term hashtag Justification Other solutions including apologizing or ignoring are not sufficient enough to pass the crisis-to-be. Ending the campaign early will irritate or alienate people who post positive customer experience, and will not make the critics silent. Apologizing for nothing will result in a weak and guilty public image that will discourage customers by lowering their trust. Ignoring the bashes cannot hold long since traditional media is stepping in, the company will be blamed for ignoring negative feedbacks, and may be facing a reappearance of the former PR crisis PMorgan's Pr failure addressed the importance of not ignoring angry customers. After JPMorgan launched the #AskJPM twitter campaign, hoping to entice college elites to have instant conversation with JPM executives. the hashtag backfired With 6000 taunting tweets asking questions such as can I have my house back JPMorgan cancelled this campaign which ended in textbook showing how twitter
5 mechanism under new hashtag #MakeCanBetter. Canadian Jet could encourage current Twitter users to post under this new hashtag, can work out solutions to tackle the negative comments (see graph 1). Besides, this new hashtag helps PR department monitor the company’s reputation on a minute to minute basis. With sufficient data analysis and machine learning algorithm, Canadian Jet could spot any trending as soon as possible, thus minimizing potential harm. Graph1. Flow chart of using #MakeCanBetter as a long-term hashtag Justification Other solutions including apologizing or ignoring are not sufficient enough to pass the crisis-to-be. Ending the campaign early will irritate or alienate people who post positive customer experience, and will not make the critics silent. Apologizing for nothing will result in a weak and guilty public image that will discourage customers by lowering their trust. Ignoring the bashes cannot hold long since traditional media is stepping in, the company will be blamed for ignoring negative feedbacks, and may be facing a reappearance of the former PR crisis. JPMorgan’s PR failure addressed the importance of NOT ignoring angry customers. After JPMorgan launched the #AskJPM twitter campaign, hoping to entice college elites to have instant conversation with JPM executives, the hashtag backfired. With 6000 taunting tweets asking questions such as “can I have my house back”, JPMorgan cancelled this campaign which ended in textbook showing how twitter Work out solutions to address the comments. Make public solutions, and show customers that their concerns are being addressed. Collect comments (feedbacks) using #MakeCanB etter
campaign can backfire. Unlike JPMorgan, the solution proposed here addressed customers concerns fairly. The solutions above could send a message that" despite that delays cannot be avoided in airplane companies, we still want our customers to satisfy M acknowledging that issue exists is hardly enough; company has to respond in a sincere and empathetic way. In December, 2017, Apple users uncovered that the company was deliberately slowing down older phones to extend battery life After confirming and apologizing for its behavior, Apple offered cheap battery replacement. However, customers were criticizing how Apple planned to trick customers to replacing battery to make more profit. The Canadian Jet case is similar to the apple case in that only a segment of customers were effected by neg gative experience, but both negative experience echoed. Unlike Apple, the proposed solution responds to customers with sympathy. Sympathy helps in building a customer-oriented image, while Apple's"smartness"only strengthens the perception that Apple is a bloodsucking company beneath its user-friendly appearance Lastly, this approach presented a long-term customer feedback mechanism Feedback mechanism has been seen as an antecedent of company service quality With increasingly homogeneity in the airplane industry, service quality is becoming a dominant factor in choosing between similar products. Therefore, higher service quality helps in luring customers from competitors. In this way, the solving of this PR crisis could help in establishing brands in the long term Reference Pang, Augustine, Nasrath Begam Binte Abul Hassan, and Aaron Chee Yang Chong Negotiating crisis in the social media environment: Evolution of crises online gaining credibility offline. " Corporate CommunicationS: An International ournal19.1(2014):96-118 Schultz, Friederike, Sonja Utz, and Anja Goritz. "Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media. Public relations review 37.1(2011): 20-27
6 campaign can backfire. Unlike JPMorgan, the solution proposed here addressed customers concerns fairly. The solutions above could send a message that “despite that delays cannot be avoided in airplane companies, we still want our customers to satisfy”. Merely acknowledging that issue exists is hardly enough; company has to respond in a sincere and empathetic way. In December, 2017, Apple users uncovered that the company was deliberately slowing down older phones to extend battery life. After confirming and apologizing for its behavior, Apple offered cheap battery replacement. However, customers were criticizing how Apple planned to trick customers to replacing battery to make more profit. The Canadian Jet case is similar to the Apple case in that only a segment of customers were effected by negative experience, but both negative experience echoed. Unlike Apple, the proposed solution responds to customers with sympathy. Sympathy helps in building a customer-oriented image, while Apple’s “smartness” only strengthens the perception that Apple is a bloodsucking company beneath its user-friendly appearance. Lastly, this approach presented a long-term customer feedback mechanism. Feedback mechanism has been seen as an antecedent of company service quality. With increasingly homogeneity in the airplane industry, service quality is becoming a dominant factor in choosing between similar products. Therefore, higher service quality helps in luring customers from competitors. In this way, the solving of this PR crisis could help in establishing brands in the long term. Reference Pang, Augustine, Nasrath Begam Binte Abul Hassan, and Aaron Chee Yang Chong. "Negotiating crisis in the social media environment: Evolution of crises online, gaining credibility offline." Corporate Communications: An International Journal 19.1 (2014): 96-118. Schultz, Friederike, Sonja Utz, and Anja Göritz. "Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media." Public relations review 37.1 (2011): 20-27
Alfonso. Gonzalez-Herrero. and Smith Suzanne. "Crisis communications management on the web: how internet-based technologies are changing the way public relations professionals handle business crises. "Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 16.3(2008) 143-153
7 Alfonso, González‐Herrero, and Smith Suzanne. "Crisis communications management on the web: how internet‐based technologies are changing the way public relations professionals handle business crises." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 16.3 (2008): 143-153
