How United Airlines Handled their “Passenger Crisis”

Who: United Airlines, one of the world’s largest international flight companies.

What: Conducted a survey using Crimson Hexagon’s BrightView, Analytics and Sentiment Analysis of social media conversations with “United Airlines” from May 1 — May 31, 2017.

How: In a sample of 275,022 Twitter posts generated through the entire month of May 2017, sentiment analyses, opinion analyses, and word clusters were produced to further investigate how the conversation around United Airlines changed following one of the post public company crises of that summer.

A total of 275,022 posts were sampled for the entire month of May 2017 on United Airlines

BrightView Public Sentiment Analysis

WORD CLUSTERS

By analyzing the word choice and conversation maps of the audiences of interest, this insight can better inform the language of choice when communicating with these audiences.

Word Cloud

By speaking in their same words, this will bolster credibility, compatibility, and authenticity between message giver and message receiver.

Conversion Topic Waves

Tracking the categories of conversation provides a deeper analysis into how the audiences of interest are communicating. By dissecting which conversations generating the most activity, this can inform which types of messages will be well received and receive the largest potential audience.

GENERAL CONVERSATION CATEGORIES: The sentiment analysis highlights the power that influencers can have when they get involved in a crisis: see Trump & United (Yellow)

The main keywords that the scan identified were: passenger, United, Flying, and Flight. Understanding the message frames allows for EASIER CONVERSATION TRACKING, SORTING & MAPPING.

THE STATEMENTS OF THE CEO GENERATED 2X MORE CONVERSATIONAL ACTIVITY, compared to other conversation categories, while CONVERSATIONS WITH TRUMP were continuously sustained throughout.

CEOs ARE UNIQUELY POSITIONED TO RESPOND TO CRISES. Within 24–48 hours, the United Airlines CEO responded during the sharp rise in negative sentiment. There was a sharp decrease in negative social activity following this statement.

AMID NEGATIVE PRESS, ISSUES CONFLATE TOGETHER: a young girl flying with leggings was told she could not fly. This generated an increased amount of negative conversation for United due to the already established sentiment.

AMID NEGATIVE PRESS FROM A COMPETITOR, an organization can increase their positive presence by setting themselves apart from the crisis (i.e. Southwest, American Air)

KEY INSIGHTS

• United Airlines addressed the crisis through a strategically-timed CEO statement and earned-media outreach.
• The statement coincides with decreased negative sentiment, proving that the mitigation tactics were successful.