The article in the url below demonstrates the dangers for firms of ignoring the interests of key stakeholders in an age of rampant social media:
“After British Airways lost his father's luggage, Hasan Syed didn't just tweet his complaints at the company. He paid for a ‘sponsored tweet’ to broadcast his frustration directly to British Airways 302,000 Twitter followers.”
To be clear—the most notable aspect of this story is not that a disgruntled customer tweeted a complaint about a company acting badly, but that the disgruntled customer paid money to buy space on Twitter to ensure his tweet appeared prominently on BA’s page and was widely read:
“The tweet, for which Syed paid an undisclosed sum, appeared prominently in the company's Twitter feed and was read by thousands of other users.”
The other notable aspect of this story is that BA took eight hours to respond and then did so with the pathetic excuse that they do not get out of bed until 9am local time:
“Eight hours after the original posting and the tweet had been picked up by news sites, the airline tweeted back, ‘Sorry for the delay in responding, our twitter feed is open 0900-1700 GMT.’ The company promised to look into the baggage issue.”
I think BA has forgotten that the sun never sets on their global operations!
Have a good weekend.
David
David Chandler & Bill Werther
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Customer buys promoted tweet to complain about British Airways
Customer buys promoted tweet to complain about British Airways
By Ben Popken
September 3, 2013
NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/customer-buys-promoted-tweet-complain-about-british-airways-8C11065474
