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No, I’m not referring to some Black Mirror scenario where your social media musings could cause you trouble…  Instead, I’m drawing my readers’ attention to a recent study that suggests that those who post negative comments on social media – but receive a response… ANY response… from the airline – are not only more inclined to actively prefer that airline in the future, but would be willing to pay MORE for the privilege!

I came across this study, published in the Harvard Business Review, which you can read by clicking here. I don’t often read the HBR, but I certainly pay attention when my brother-in-law co-authors an article for the magazine. As an analyst for Twitter, his objective is to show how interacting with customers via Twitter is in a company’s best interest. But rather than just spouting marketing gibberish, he takes part in “proper” research projects with control groups, etc. in order to provide hard data to back up Twitter’s claims of usefulness.

I was certainly shocked to see this chart outlining how people are willing to pay substantially more if the airline responds fast enough to one’s tweet…

As a keen observer of airlines, hotels and loyalty programmes in general, I’ve always wondered why many of us love to complain about British Airways, whilst simultaneously planning Tier Point runs to maintain or achieve elite status. After all, it seems that the lower the customer satisfaction rating for the likes of Ryanair and British Airways, the higher the passenger growth…

I’ve also wondered how hotel chains manage to convert a certain percentage of guests into highly loyal “elite” members – and I’m as guilty as any reader. So perhaps I should just quote one of the commenters in that HBR article…

We humans crave acknowledgement. As your research demonstrates, if a company acknowledges us, we like them and trust them, and respond accordingly (through a willingness to pay more). And we give them extra points for speed and personalization…

So the next time you are tempted to post “I’ll Never Fly Your Airline Again” on social media, just keep in mind that you might find yourself booking that airline before you know it! Who knows… maybe if I had tweeted “I will never fly Ryanair again” or a customer service rep had replied to my post about low cost carriers, I might now be a Ryanair regular.

Just in case… let me state for the record that I will NEVER fly Cathay Pacific or Etihad First Class ever again.  🙂 LOL.