This document summarizes JetBlue's experience using social media to engage with customers. It discusses how JetBlue initially struggled to grow followers on Twitter by just promoting sales and press releases. It then explains how JetBlue learned to have more authentic conversations by responding to customer complaints and questions, which helped them build trust and gain more followers. The document also covers lessons learned about not being creepy by over-following customers, addressing service issues transparently, and not negotiating with "terrorists" who try to blackmail the company.

1. Case Study Description:
Customer expectations for service are the same, but their ability to hold
companies accountable is changing rapidly. Learn how JetBlue harnesses
the power of social media to better serve customers, and how the New
York‐based airline ensures their social media presence isn’t bogged down
by complaints.
JENNY:
• Good morning everyone – it’s a pleasure to be here with you today.
• My thanks to BDI for hosting today’s event, and for all of the events BDI
puts together for our community.
• I’m here to share with you some of the experiences and lessons learned
from JetBlue’s foray into social media, and our observations on how the
Customer behavior is changing. There are some decisions we, as
communicators, have to make, when it comes to online engagement,
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2. and I hope you benefit from our experience in some way.
• I look forward to your questions, too!
• The online world has changed so rapidly over the last five years or so. I remember
hearing the buzzwords “social media” back in the early 2000s, often whispered in staff
meetings and at various communications conferences as “the next big thing” in
communications.
• I don’t know about you, but I can live in the theoretical world only so long – I need
something concrete to play with to see where the rubber meets the road.
• So while the online world is as large – or larger – than the actual world we live in, I’ll focus
my remarks today to Twitter as a proxy for online interactions of any platform.
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3. JENNY:
First, a brief word on our starting point strategy.
We intended Twitter to be a channel to promote sales and give the public a
taste of our personality. So we did things like tweet links to our press
releases, or to interesting articles about us. This was before Twitter had gone
“mainstream” – I think we had grown the following to 1,000 followers, mostly
because we were one of the first non‐techie companies on there.
Murphy’s Law of Combat is our first Lesson Learned:
No plan survives the first contact intact.
The first sign that our strategy wasn’t going to work was the fact that we
weren’t growing followers. We were kind of holding steady where we were,
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4. but other companies were joining Twitter and racking up thousands of
followers.
We tried a few other things – asking fun questions to get conversation going, or
tweeting industry news to reach the aviation enthusiasts. Finally, in frustration,
Morgan Johnston, our social media strategist, figuratively threw up his hands
and tweeted:
“What do you want from this account???”
The answer came back immediately:
“We want you to ask those questions. We want you to talk with us, not at us.
And we want you to be helpful.”
Morgan went back to his roots and dug out his copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto
and made all of us read it. The Cluetrain Manifesto essentially states that
markets are conversations, and an authentic interaction between people is the
goal. NOT a sale.
So we started searching for conversations we could take part in. We already
routinely looked for mentions of JetBlue online – in blogs, in online news
articles, but we only interacted with 1 out of 20 mentions.
We knew we had to flip that ratio – that interaction is the only goal of social
media. So we went in search of any mention of JetBlue or air travel, and
started engaging.
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5. Every person who followed us, we followed back.
We were so enthusiastic that every person who mentioned us, we followed.
We could see, in retrospect, how that could be interpreted as… well… creepy
and stalker‐y.
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6. Lightning Round Case Study:
Jonathan Fields is at our terminal at JFK, and spies William Shatner. He logs in
using our free WiFi and tweets:
JetBlue terminal. William Shatner waiting in pinstripe suite and shades to
board flight to Burbank. Why’s he flying JetBlue? Free, maybe?
A few minutes later…
JetBlue is now following you on Twitter.
Mr. Fields is understandably concerned. Did JetBlue know he was on the free
WiFi? Is JetBlue looking into his computer as we speak? Is this airline spying
on him? He takes to Twitter again:
Using JetBlue wifi to access twitter, 10 seconds later, I get a follow request
from JetBlue on twitter. Half freaked out, half awed.
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7. 20 minutes later, the plot thickens even more. Mr. Fields gets an email from
Morgan Johnston, apologizing for starting him and explaining that we followed
him because we thought the tweet about William Shatner was funny.
Second Lesson Learned. Don’t be creepy.
Despite these missteps, we gained more followers and built a reputation for
being no‐nonsense problem solvers online.
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8. JENNY:
This example doesn’t come from Twitter, but it illustrates how we started
thinking of social media as part of our business strategy.
A bicyclist from Portland, OR checked in for his JetBlue flight, checking one
bag and keeping a carry on. The checked bag met all of the size and weight
restrictions for a free checked bag. The counter agent started chatting this
customer up, and somehow the conversation turned to what was packed in
the bag.
“A folding bike,” our customer said.
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9. “Oh,” our agent said. “Well, then I have to charge you a bike fee.”
Ugh. I should mention that we have a bike fee because it’s usually an awkward
shaped case that exceeds the allowable size. We don’t have anything against
bikes per se – just the size they take up. You know – when they’re NOT FOLDED
UP. Folding bikes were relatively new at this time – we had never heard of
them.
We’ve all done it – gone on auto pilot and turned into robots and did
something without thought. But this bicyclist was still scratching his head
about the interaction so he blogged about it.
We saw his story about the bike fee and the circumstances and it was pretty
clear what we had to do.
We posted in the comments section of his blog that we would look into this and
get back to him immediately. We had already decided that transparency was
important, and if a customer had already taken to the airwaves, we would have
to address the issue as publically.
We then informed our airports leadership that there’s new fangled thing called
a folding bike and we would like to deploy a radical application of common
sense and change our internal language and policy so these bikes aren’t
charged a bike fee. Which is really an oversize fee.
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10. We then called up our Customer Support center and got the bike fee refunded
to our customer’s credit card.
And then we went back to the blog and updated our customer – that thanks to
his story we now know that folding bikes exist, and they fit just fine in their
case, and shouldn’t be charged a fee. We did this all within 24 hours.
Third Lesson Learned: A service failure is just another opportunity to earn
loyalty, if the recovery is done well.
We stopped being afraid of what we were going to hear on Twitter, and started
seeing every delayed flight as an opportunity to help our fellow crewmembers
in the operation – even if it was just an update on the weather or asking the
local GM to roll out the snack cart for customers in the gate area.
Our appetite for feedback drove more interactions, and more followers, and
the success of Twitter meant that more regular people were online all of the
time… but another kind of person was online now… the blackmailer.
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11. JENNY
We also call them “terrorists.” And we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
These are the people who threaten to “ruin” your brand among their
followers if you don’t do what they say.
Luckily, we met our first terrorists after we had some experience under our
belt, so we weren’t easy frightened. But it’s still unnerving to hear “I will ruin
you if you don’t refund my ticket and give me a free round trip.”
One of our most recent examples involved a twitter‐lebrity with close to 7,000
followers, who asked us for a free ticket because “that’s what celebrities get.”
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12. We declined and pointed him to our website to find the best fare. He took to
his feed and blasted us for being inhuman.
We find the community will often self‐correct poor behavior, as well. We
recently had an incident on one of our flights where a family of 4 was removed
because one of the children would not stay belted in their seat on taxi‐out.
Plenty of folks took to Twitter to both decry and support our decision – the only
thing they had in common was that no one actually knew the facts of the
situation. But for every person on Twitter saying “shame on you for not being
family friendly” there was another who said “you don’t know the circumstances
– don’t cast judgment.”
Is it possible that the online community is actually starting to reflect
expectations of decorum and social interaction etiquette of the real world?
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13. JENNY:
Back to strategy for a moment.
Now that we have some lessons learned about how to behave online, we
went back to the drawing board and asked ourselves – how can we really
make a difference?
Or to say it another way – what do we have to change in order to stop feeling
like we’re drinking from a fire hose?
Where we are today:
RTR team in SLC, coordinates with SOC in NYC.
Sometimes you know when things are going to go sideways. You know when
you cancel a morning flight that the afternoon flight that plane was supposed
to operate is going to be affected. You know that thunderstorms in New York
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14. mean delays and cancellations in Florida –where the sun is shining.
So now we no longer wait for the issues to pop up – we get to the customer
before they can complain.
If a flight is going to be delayed because of our fault – maintenance or crew
scheduling or some other mixup that is under our control – we let the downline
airport team know, and we give them a letter of apology and a coupon off
future travel to hand out to each customer when they arrive.
If your TV isn’t working, and we know about it because the flight attendant had
written it up in the log book – we send you a $15 coupon.
If we know bad weather is coming in and our schedule is going to go to hell, we
call you and ask if you can go the next weekend. If you can’t, we tell you to
check the website for advisories because it isn’t looking promising.
Preemptive measures makes Twitter as Customer service scalable. We aren’t
reacting to everything – we’re planning it out, anticipating what will happen,
and training our field teams that we have their backs – that we are going to
help reduce the stress of the operation on them. Just knowing half the time
what’s coming gives you breathing room – and that lets you make better
decisions.
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15. JENNY
Social media will be part of everyone’s job. No matter what you company’s
business is, I think it’s imperative that everyone in your company knows how
to integrate social media into their role.
We’ve built our team that way – there is only one person at JetBlue who has
“social media” in their title, and that’s Morgan Johnston. It’s his job to
evangelize our mission among leadership and our internal audience, and
communicate best practices, and to help others find their own value online, in
support of the company.
I’m happy to take questions.
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