Customer service has always been a key focus for Dallas Fort Worth International Airport's organizational goals. This past summer, DFW used the power of social media to reach it's customers in real-time and engage with them offering excellent customer "sunny service" during their journey at DFW,
With collaboration between DFW's Marketing, Corporate Communications, and Customer Service teams, members from each department came together in a "social media command center" every Friday between May 22- August 14 to listen and engage with DFW travelers on Twitter. When the campaign launched, the team officially called themselves, "Sunny Service Team", offering real-time "sunny service" help on social media.
When travelers checked in, tweeted us to our official handle @dfwairport, or tweeted using the official campaign hashtag #DFWSummer, members inside the social media command center tracked customers down inside DFW's terminals and surprised and delighted them at their gate with travel-related gifts. Not only did we surprise and delighted our travelers, but we also assisted them on various information such as gathering flight information for a delayed flight, calling the Traveler's Aid lost and found when customers lost personal belongings, or even honored requests when customers wanted to meet their loved ones at the gate.
Over the course of a few Fridays, the campaign successfully took off on Twitter.
To bring the DFW brand more transparency and showing how important our customers are to us, DFW's CEO, Sean Donohue, and the Executive Staff kicked off every Friday morning for an hour chatting with our customers and answering their questions about our Airport on DFW's official Twitter handle. Travelers tweeted questions using the official hashtag #AskDFWExec.
Towards the end of the campaign, DFW wanted to end the summer campaign in style. On the last week of Sunny Service Days, a remote controlled walking iRobot navigated through the Airport greeting and helping travelers with different questions. Customers looked towards "Sunny, the Robot" as the information desk on wheels!
The program quickly became so popular organizationally, every DFW Airport employee wanted to join in the fun. By popular demand, the Sunny Service Team launched an employee engagement portion of the campaign where employees signed up for shifts to join the Sunny Service Team to help surprise and delight the customers at the gate!
Program Fast Facts
-Nearly 1,700 customer engagements
- 34.9 million potential impressions on Twitter with 1,167 mentions
- 10 DFW staff responding on Twitter at various times over the 10 sessions
- 10 DFW staff distributing items to customers at various times over the 10 sessions
- CEO and Executive Twitter Chat sessions produced 100 customer interactions
- 80 Airport employees across 22 departments assisted with the in-terminal customer interactions and promotion of the program
- Out-of-pocket expense of approximately $7,500 for customer giveaways
