SMCRVA: The Social of Travel

Last Thursday I attended the Social of Travel panel hosted by SMCRVA at the Science Museum of Virginia. Featuring Morgan Johnston of JetBlue and Brian Simpson of Robert Smith Hotel and moderated by Jennifer Carnam, the VP of Marketing for the Richmond Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau.

After a bit of networking in the IMAX lobby, the group moved into the IMAX Theater for the panel. While both panelists talked about their companies’ uses of social media, there were a few things that really stuck out. Morgan Johnston of JetBlue said that his company’s policy on Social Media for employees is fairly simple: “Don’t be stupid.” I think a lot of us would agree that a simple policy like that could serve a lot of companies well.

Morgan Johnston (@JetBlue)

Morgan Johnston, along with the handful of others that help manage the JetBlue Twitter account (@JetBlue), use the account to help JetBlue travelers both by giving advice and by trouble shooting customer issues where they can. By posting information about flights, while tracking the account for customer issues and alerting the local JetBlue terminal to them, they are able to help travelers and avert issues that can have long-term effects.

That being said, both Morgan Johnston and Brian Simpson said that they do not use Social Media to directly handle customer service issues. They still direct customers to the proper support channels so that they can be handled in the proper way.

Brian Smith (@RSHotel)

Both Simpson and Johnston do like social media as it allows companies to be more human when interacting with their customers, taking some of the formality of traditional customer service and stripping it away. This is good for the customers as most would agree that most consumers are wary of customer service having had a bad experience at least once, and social media, especially Twitter, doesn’t require you to wait on the line for the next available representative.

Both Johnston and Simpson’s descriptions of how their companies’ use social media is good advice for most businesses. Allow your employees to use social media so long as they’re smart and responsible with it. Don’t use social media as customer service, but know that you can handle customer service issues through social media. And finally be human.

Jennifer Carnam (@jcarnam)

Thanks to Morgan Johnston, Brian Simpson, Jennifer Carnam, the Science Museum of Virginia, and SMCRVA for hosting a great panel, and for offering up some great networking time both before and after the panel. I know myself and everybody that attended had a great time and learned a lot from the speakers.