When Social Media Delivers Customer Service: Differential Customer Treatment in the Airline Industry1
Authors: Gunarathne, Priyanga; Rui, Huaxia; Seidmann, Abraham
Journal: MIS Quarterly (2018)
<jats:p>Companies increasingly are providing customer service through social media, helping customers on a real-time basis. Although some traditional call centers might prioritize customers based on their expected business values, the grounds for differential customer service on social media are unclear, since there has been little theoretical or empirical investigation of this new phenomenon. Building on the literature of social psychology and complaint management, we hypothesize two main drivers of differential treatment: the social media influence effect, which refers to the impact of the customer’s relative standing on social media, and the bystander effect, which refers to the impact of the presence of other social media users. To test these effects, we analyzed more than three million tweets to seven major U.S. airlines on Twitter from September 2014 to May 2015. The evidence is clear that airlines respond to less than half of the tweets directed at them by complaining customers—in contrast with traditional call centers, which are expected to address all callers. Interestingly, we find that the airlines are more likely to respond to complaints from customers with more follow…