NB: This is a viewpoint of Ben Julius, founder of TouristIsrael.
At times of crisis, it’s well-known that social media comes into its own. It helps spread real-time updates, answer questions from anxious customers - but this isn't new.
The three Israeli airlines - El Al, and its two smaller rivals Israir and Arkia - have been striking since early Sunday morning against the open skies policy that the Israeli cabinet has since decided to ratify.
The policy will see open skies between Israel and the EU, something which the Israeli airlines have consistently opposed fearful that it will lead to their demise.
Israel is a tech-savvy country. Comscore revealed that Israel is the most highly engaged country for social media with, as of 2011, the average Israeli spending 11.1 hours a month on social media sites, compared to 6.9 hours a month in the USA.
It’s also no secret that Israelis love to travel – whether it be a short trip to London or Paris or a half a year backpacking adventure around India or the Far East, and the prospect of cheaper air fares is very exciting to them.
In fact, when we recently wrote on Tourist Israel about the prospect of Ryanair flying to Tel Aviv and had over 4,000 social media likes and shares.
So with this in mind, you’d expect that the Israeli airlines would have had a strong social media presence in light of the strikes with some sort of pre-determined strategy backed up by strong customer services.
You’d expect it, but in reality, El Al’s social media response was embarrassing. There were key four failures:
Failure One – No coherent message
The first lesson of PR is to have a coherent message. El Al’s international Facebook page, El Al Global, had no message relating to the strike until over 18 hours after it began when there was an update to tell us what we already knew.
But it wasn’t only that, there was no explaining about the reasons for the strike or an attempt to explain El Al’s concerns.
The strike began before the decision on Open Skies was made.
El Al should have used social media to explain why they feel that Open Skies would be damaging in a way that people could associate with.
Failure Two – No authority
Speak from your position as the people who know and update your customers. El Al’s UK Twitter stream, for example, posted no updates about the strike until Sunday night, long after it began.
But when it did, it was a retweet from a local travel agent and not an authoritative message.
El Al should have provided regular updates to customers. Regardless of whether there is a change or not, flying is stressful and people want to know that even if there’s no news, they haven’t been forgotten.
Failure 3 – Misleading customers
The worst thing to do, especially in the world of social media and internet is twist the truth.
Posted 48 hours before the strike, the El Al UK Twitter stream posted a message about a "possible strike in Israel" as if to say this was a country-wide aviation strike affecting all flights to and from Israel.
Meanwhile, the El Al USA Facebook page wrote about the "strike at Ben Gurion Airport".
Don’t lie, it isn’t nice - it doesn’t make people happy, and your customers are better than that!
Failure Four – No communication
Phone lines are jammed, it’s expected, so airlines around the world have social media channels set up to provide another communication stream with customers.
Posts on El Al’s Facebook wall weren’t replied to, and worst still opportunities to take present a positive image were ignored.
The second in this image was from a group of students who had been accepted to represent Israel in a science competition in the USA.
The airline unions actually agreed that their flight would depart in light of the social media storm that the group kicked up.
Of course, like every other serious airline in the world, El Al should have comprehensively communicated with customers on its social media channels, but also taken advantage of the small glimmers that would present it in a positive light.
With the students, it would have done wonders in presenting the airline as a national asset, exactly what they wanted to be thought of as.
The irony
El Al is suffering competitively because its set-up, its fleet, and its product are outdated. It’s widely perceived that the airline is overstaffed from the top ranks of management and the whole way down.
There is no coherent brand, there is no coherent message about why to fly with them. The fleet is old, the in-flight product is variable.
In other words, El Al is stuck in the past.
The airlines failure when it comes to social media in this strike, and its wider failure in its global online presence (the website is barely functional, particularly when it is compared to other airlines) is ironic when compared to those airlines such as easyJet who the open skies agreement will allow to enter Israel more aggressively.
It has a brilliant online presence, with professional social media used as a channel to communicate with customers on a universal and personal level.
El Al has many lessons to learn, and social media, which could so easily have helped them gain some sympathy with the Israeli public during major disruption, was painfully ignored.
NB: This is a viewpoint of Ben Julius, founder of TouristIsrael.