Immediate Attention Please! What Matters To Customers Using A Social Network To Complain: Empirical Evidence From The Airline Industry

The popularity of social networks and smart mobile devices makes it convenient for customers to complain about unsatisfied service experiences by posting messages online, which needs immediate attention from service providers. Since the airline industry is one of the industries with lowest customer satisfaction and some airlines have been trying to use social networks for customer service, we collected tweets from five major airlines\u27 Twitter accounts to uncover the critical failure points complained by customers and to explore the missing links that cause the mismatches between airlines\u27 strategic intent and customers\u27 needs and expectations. Our findings revealed that customers\u27 complains mainly center on unsatisfied primary needs in five broad categories: explicit services, supporting facilities, implicit services, facilitating goods, and facilitating information. The top three most complained broad categories are explicit services, supporting facilities, and facilitating information. In addition, we identified that customers\u27 dissatisfaction is mainly due to the mismatch in three operation areas in the airline industry: (a) airlines\u27 emphasis on cost financial performance doesn\u27t match customers\u27 expectation on best values, (b) airlines\u27 focus on process-centered approach doesn\u27t match customers\u27 preferences on customer-centered approach, and (c) lack of information and unsynchronized communication doesn\u27t meet customers\u27 real time information and communication needs. Our findings can provide valuable insights for airline executives to improve their service operations

Business Models in Emerging Online Services

Due to advances in technology and the rapid growth of online services, a significant number of new and inventive web-based service models and delivery methods have been introduced. Although online resources and services are having an impact on more traditional service delivery mechanisms, it is not yet clear how these emerging mechanisms for online service delivery will result in profitable business models. In this paper, we consider emerging business models for online services and their implications for how services are delivered, used, and paid for. We demonstrate the changing roles of user / consumer and provider / seller. We also discuss the applicability of different business models for various domains