Andreas Spaeth sits down with Gert Wim ter Haar, the manager of KLM’s Social Media Hub in Amsterdam-Schiphol to talk about its very succesful social media strategy.
It was during the air traffic meltdown due to the Iceland volcanic ash cloud in April 2010, that KLM realized how powerful a communication tool social media can be, especially in times of crisis. Ever since, the Dutch legacy carrier of 95 years has been one of the most innovative players in the field of social media. It pioneered an offer called “Meet and Seat” in 2012, where passengers can opt to sit next to another one based on his or her profile on social media. On every KLM flight there is an announcement after landing, promising passengers a response to any query via social media within one hour. The actual response time is much quicker on average. Currently, KLM has 1.2 million followers on Twitter and 8.8 million users have “liked” its Facebook page.
How many marriages has KLM instigated through its social media offer “meet and seat”?Gert Wim ter Haar: I wish I knew! ‘Meet and Seat’ has been in place for years and was one of the earlier gimmicks we introduced. It was widely picked up, mainly in the USA. We are still proud we developed it. It has never become huge in volume, but many people still use it and maybe we have created some marriages, I honestly don’t know, that would literally have been matches made in heaven then…
You mentioned the word ‘gimmick’, to what extent are actions like “#happy to help” PR stunts rather than an actual statement of good customer service?ter Haar: Maybe I misused the word ‘gimmick’. ‘Meet and Seat’ created a lot of buzz because of its innovative and edgy characteristics. But we give passengers the option to get to know each other in order to share a taxi, have a coffee or enlighten the flight. We really believe in and strive for adding value for our customers. The way we launch a new service can maybe be seen as a PR stunt. The recent campaign with Airbnb in opening a hotel room in a decommissioned MD-11 wide body jet was to promote the partnership we have with Airbnb facilitating our customers to book Airbnb accommodation through klm.com. And I don’t see “#happy to help” as a gimmick, either. It was to show we can really provide the extra mile in service. We’ve been there for five days and helped about 2,500 people and only made a few videos of that. So we really tried to help people.
Whose idea was the MD-11 apartment?
ter Haar: Airbnb and KLM both felt a brand fit. That’s why we decided to meet up and see whether we could work together and strengthen both brands. During the first meeting in Copenhagen we jointly developed the MD-11 apartment idea. It seemed impossible but we luckily could use a phased out MD-11 that was waiting to be handed over to the buyer.
How difficult is it within a traditional airline like KLM to convince departments like maintenance to go along on such a venture?ter Haar: It’s definitely a challenge in such a big company. As you can imagine this project could only be realized together with Maintenance. The trick is to respect each others responsibilities and qualities. They were counter parts of the designer about what was possible in the plane and they secured the safety and security, we organized the contest and video creation.
KLM seems to be far ahead of much of the rest of the aviation industry with its social media activities and its creativity, why?ter Haar: One of the key aspects behind the success of KLM’s social media activities is that we really look at the issues our customers have and report through social media. We try to find new products, mainly based on social media, with social media connections, and really make them customer-friendly. So you would call it ‘campaignable customer service.’ People respond on social media with their difficulties and issues and we try to provide them with products that really help solving these issues and make this as social and shareable as possible.
What are your most important social media channels at the moment?
ter Haar: Facebook and Twitter are still our main channels, they have a huge volume. But we see a lot of things changing. In Russia, the Vkontakte platform is very important and powerful, the Chinese market is hugely upcoming, where Sina Weibo was the most successful platform, but at the moment it’s WeChat, we try to be as active on that platform as we can with Chinese people. A new channel for us, being the first company using it as a customer channel, is LinkedIn. It’s more a business channel with different kinds of people that are more attached to your brand. They have more complex queries, but it’s even more fun to resolve them. For us, LinkedIn is really becoming a focus in the coming years.
Do the social media activities also show in the airline’s bottom line, which probably then convinces even the bean counters in management?
ter Haar: That’s necessary if you produce costs for running social media activities, it has to make money this way or the other. People want to buy products via social media as long as they are convinced it’s safe, and people need quick and good service. When people ask about products they want to buy – don’t send them to other channels, but help them directly, and you will be successful in your sales.
How difficult was it to get started?
ter Haar: Many airlines are business-case driven. If we would have made a business case from the very start of a social media service, I would have never been able to convince people within the company that we needed this amount of money to start up operations. So our business case was the Icelandic volcano’s ash cloud that erupted in 2010. It really helped us because with the plus and minus business case in the beginning, you really wouldn’t have gotten there. We started doing it fast, doing things, breaking things, and then in the end, the finances will add up anyhow.
The airlines twitter page clearly stating you will get a reply in under 45 minutes
Talking about breaking things – probably the biggest PR disaster was your posting on the occasion of the soccer game Netherlands vs. Mexico last year. How did that happen?
ter Haar: Looking back at the situation, it was really part of what we were doing. We were trying to be edgy at all parts in our communication. At some point we slipped a bit over the edge, and in this particular case we have underestimated the local emotions. We’ve learned a few things on this occasion. Like, if you want to be sarcastic on social media, do it about yourself, projecting on yourself, on your own company, try to think about it even better how other cultures than our Western European culture would perceive a specific thing. Otherwise, we still encourage our staff to be really edgy, but always with respect for others, and try to look for the right tweet and the right post.
How do you make sure you have a good grip on your work in the different languages you cover?
ter Haar: Looking at languages, we have learnt about that a lot in the past years, we try to only work with native speakers, from Amsterdam and other places. We currently have our offerings in 14 different languages. Every language we work in and why has its own story, in Norwegian for example, because Norway is an important market for KLM, with seven destinations we fly to. We use Chinese because it’s a huge growth market on social media, and also a focus market for KLM’s operation. We have big plans as KLM in Brazil, that’s why Portuguese is one of our focus languages. So it’s not necessarily the world’s largest languages we communicate in.
The lesson for today’s passenger seems to be: If anything goes wrong at the airport, don’t call anybody, don’t queue up at any counter, just tweet. Do you agree?
ter Haar: The ultimate goal of a social media manager at any company should be also to change the other channels and to convince them internally they have to provide as much a good service. So the overall service level in your company will rise and in the end the customer can contact any channel.
Which other airline’s social media activities do you deem to be well done?
ter Haar: Delta Air Lines for example has a Twitter service with an average response time of between five and seven minutes, which I find fantastic. At KLM we achieve 23 minutes on average on Twitter, and we are very happy with it.
What new features do you dream of, or what do you see the mid-term future in the area of social media-related services will bring
ter Haar: I think we can improve a lot on the baggage handling side. Many passengers have sometimes huge, painful issues, people miss something that belongs to them. I definitely would like to start a few initiatives on that end. I would like social media service to be more effective, so people asking a question get the right response right away. And we should use the customer data on the back end as effectively as possible, more so than we currently can.
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