KLM Airlines: from crisis to social media success

Really important objective of Social Media Marketing is customer service. Customer service is a little bit neglected generally in the literature. However, especially within service-based companies, banking, and so on, it is in fact very important. Because in the customer experience economy, it is about where the customer wants to contact you. If I want to contact you via Twitter, put a customer service query, then you better be on Twitter. If I want to phone you, then you better have a service hotline. So again, this isn't necessarily about social media in itself. It's more about the overall shift and expectation of the customer.

The rationale for customer service to use social media is that others' experience of an intangible service influences potential buyers, and customers mediate their experience on social media to others. What is meant by that is that the conversations happen regardless. If you do customer service on your Facebook page, you may just be talking to that specific user but your interactions with the customer are so visible for all the other potential customers. So if a customer looks at your Facebook and your Twitter, and sees that perhaps the inquiries aren't answered, then why would they then be impressed by you? So it's not just for the specific customer you're talking to at the time, but also about all the other customers that watch you digitally. And the object of the marketing goal really is to create a memorable customer service experience. And the rationale for this if we apply Allison's framework really as to create an enjoyable experience that is easy to access and delivered by experts. So again, its very customer-centric, very customer-focused. And if we use integrated social customer service strategy, then we will increase the value for customers. And it's a long-term investment for loyalty and because this positive experience is what creates value. And this would be the responsibility within team perhaps for sales or customer service. So again traditionally, it wasn't the marketing that's responsible for this. But if we think about it, nowadays as I said earlier, it should be. But whether or not this is now integrated already in the organizations, I don't know. Partly perhaps, yes. But it should be, because it is now part of the buying cycle.