SAS’s risk for bankruptcy have dominated the Swedish newspapers the last couple of days, and caused a lot of worry for some of my Swedish friends here at UBC. Yesterday the announcements that everybody hoped for came; SAS managed to reach a deal with trade unions to avoid bankruptcy. SAS personnel have worked day and night to manage the crisis and one of the things that caught my attention was the great focus on how SAS successfully have managed to keep customer informed by being highly active on social medias, namely Twitter. Cecilia Saberi is responsible for the company’s online communication and she is the one who have been acclaimed for her heroic Twitter effort. Cecilia believes social media is a golden opportunity to account for the company’s motto “Service and simplicity”, and have therefore continued put effort into it after the success of reaching out to customers via social medias during last year’s ash-clouds crisis.

I believe this is a very relevant example that correlates to what we have learnt in class about how companies can leverage social medias. Customers have noticed that they can receive answers quicker by the use of social medias (compared to e.g. phone) and it is important for companies to recognize this, especially in crisis. SAS have understood that the key to effective customer support is on social media is response time, and this has led to loads of positive comments around the company after the crisis.