Red Roo Update

[sudoer]

Making the forum private would be a bad idea before I became a member I use to always come here for answers and it would have been annoying to make an account just to read some advice

Pretty sure you need to become a member to read more than 10 threads a day or something along those lines.. no?

 

[sudoer]

Filipinos dominate the call centre market and are doing well in business process outsourcing not just on price, but because of their empathy with callers.

Guess you've never had the pleasure of dealing with Telstra Business support then?

 

[Jet L]

Pretty sure you need to become a member to read more than 10 threads a day or something along those lines.. no?

Never need to, I was a lurker without an account for a year before I joined

 

[samh004]

Perhaps the diversity of the post topics in this forum has led in part to the decision of QF Social media team to withdraw support. I don't often log onto this group - usually just browse not logged in, but it sometimes seems months go by with nothing but new threads on wine, train rides, hotels, gatherings, restaurants etc and it does sometimes require a fair amount of digging to find posts relating to flying. It's simple to add up and extrapolate status credits of potential platinum 1 members or the possible frequent flyer balances, but what about some actual data mining like simple ratios of threads about Qantas vs threads about everything else, and that may start giving answeras as to where this train has gone off the rails.

The site is pretty big, and of course covers a range of topics, but the main area for a Red Roo account to be browsing would surely have to be the Qantas Frequent Flyer Program, where all the posts are to do with Qantas. There are 12,917 threads with 328,704 posts. There are also another 241 threads with 3,472 posts in the Jetstar forum. While I don't have the tools to pinpoint how many posts have been made since the start of the month... I can tell you there have been 73 threads active since then. It's a fairly happening sub-forum; in fact, it's the busiest sub-forum on AFF, with nearly twice as many threads and/or posts as the second busiest sub-forum, Open Discussion, with 7,697 threads and 167,837 posts.

Granted, Frequent Flyer Wine Lovers is happening too, as they only have 103 threads, yet 37,548 posts. But I'm sure there are some epiQure offers being discussed in there occasionally, and that is technically Qantas-talk.

I guess if you looked at an average post per thread you would definitely see the Frequent Flyer Wine Lovers comes out on top, but it doesn't have more posts than the Qantas Frequent Flyer Program, it just has less threads, in fact 98% less!

If I was Red Roo, I probably wouldn't be using my time here to browse outside of where my customers are posting... after all, while a train ride with some wine may be fun, it's nothing to do with my (in this case) reason for being around. It would be like suggesting Red Roo browses the VA sub-forum?? You may see all the extra noise because you are looking at the site as a whole, but they're not, or they shouldn't be.

I would imagine the BA reps on Flyertalk don't move outside the BA forum much, because their audience and role is inside that particular area.

 

[Termite]

The site is pretty big, and of course covers a range of topics, but the main area for a Red Roo account to be browsing would surely have to be the Qantas Frequent Flyer Program, where all the posts are to do with Qantas. There are 12,917 threads with 328,704 posts. There are also another 241 threads with 3,472 posts in the Jetstar forum. While I don't have the tools to pinpoint how many posts have been made since the start of the month... I can tell you there have been 73 threads active since then. It's a fairly happening sub-forum; in fact, it's the busiest sub-forum on AFF, with nearly twice as many threads and/or posts as the second busiest sub-forum, Open Discussion, with 7,697 threads and 167,837 posts.

Granted, Frequent Flyer Wine Lovers is happening too, as they only have 103 threads, yet 37,548 posts. But I'm sure there are some epiQure offers being discussed in there occasionally, and that is technically Qantas-talk.

I guess if you looked at an average post per thread you would definitely see the Frequent Flyer Wine Lovers comes out on top, but it doesn't have more posts than the Qantas Frequent Flyer Program, it just has less threads, in fact 98% less!

If I was Red Roo, I probably wouldn't be using my time here to browse outside of where my customers are posting... after all, while a train ride with some wine may be fun, it's nothing to do with my (in this case) reason for being around. It would be like suggesting Red Roo browses the VA sub-forum?? You may see all the extra noise because you are looking at the site as a whole, but they're not, or they shouldn't be.

I would imagine the BA reps on Flyertalk don't move outside the BA forum much, because their audience and role is inside that particular area.

I think you are forgetting that Red Roo is a person (people) who come here - so yes, they do see the noise and clutter just as any other person sees the noise and clutter. I don't disagree that their focus should be on the group they are representing, but like the majority of the members of this site, I am guessing we hit the "Todays Posts" tab and browse from there. Simply put, that is were one then needs to wade through lots of things not associated directly with Qantas and in many cases flying, and after all, the site name is Australia Frequent Flyer.

Regardless of the spin put on it, my point remains in my mind very valid and a good reason and if I were a company rep like Red Roo, I would raise an eyebrow as to how hard it is to actually spot the posts relating to the business I am representing. I also wouldn't imagine that the role of Red Roo was to be a private support person for this forum, yet looking back over posts and not just this thread, it seems that many regarded the company spokesperson to be exactly that - a concierge for want of a better term to help solve frequent flyer problems.

I am not disregarding the fact that Red Roo did actually help many people, but I would put my last dollar on it that that was never the intention nor position description given to the social media team rather a position or stance adopted by <redated> and her predecessor when fulfilling the role of Red Roo here, and perhaps this is another partial cause of the demise of the Red Roo from AFF.

Again, just my opinion.

 

[Himeno]

I am guessing we hit the "Todays Posts" tab and browse from there.

I have never used such a page on any forum I have ever been to. I browse to the forum I wish to look at, opening different browser tabs for each forum/thread that I want to read.

In the case of Red Roo, I would be surprised if their link to AFF didn't directly open the QFF forum.

 

[Sdtravel]

I would be surprised if their link to AFF didn't directly open the QFF forum.

Mine does.

 

[eastwest101]

So just to review the current situation of AFF, am I correct in that both Authenticated Company Reps from QF and VA are observer only/retired/no longer active on AFF?

As a follow up question, I don't use Flyertalk a great deal but which (if any) airlines or companies continue to be active on the Flyertalk forums? And if so - why?

I think that Termite has raised some valid questions as to the decision making processes about company reps being active on specialist forums such as this one as opposed to being active on the broader "social media" outlets such as Facebook & Twitter. Remember large companies with a social media team have a variety of different PR and contact methods and outlets to consider. If they are into one-direction PR then obviously the broader and even unidirectional media of TV/Advertising/Media press releases is favored. Twitter and Facebook are interesting examples of two-way communication social media networks where the company can communicate to a large audience quickly but will often be at the receiving end of an often large public reaction against bad treatment of its customers or providing bad service. When it gets specific and potentially embarrassing for the service provider it often has to go into private messages, 1 on 1 communication such as email and often the trail vanishes or goes cold.

Specialist forums historically predated the formation of and mass market penetration that Facebook and Twitter have, but they have typically been the place where highly informed and specialist practitioners and enthusiasts can all congregate and discuss their hobby/interest no matter where they are in the world. Importantly – forums such as this also predated the trend of “Official Review” or Comparison by being more informal and ad-hoc resources for comparing say Korean Airlines business class seats vs JAL’s business class seats – a subject that is admittedly very niche but very relevant to someone flying to Seoul in a few months time. For some reason the specialist forums seem to be falling out of favour with the expectation that specialist sub-groups would form communities within the larger social media behemoth, Facebook or LinkedIn groups would be examples that spring to mind. I can see the reasoning for this in that the tools and medium/forum are a known quantity with a set of rules and useful tools to extract specific information or to capture and highlight specific trends. Whenever I have look at the specialists sub-groups within wider social networks I have often found them unwieldy, time consuming, spammy or often just deserted ghettos without much participation or a critical mass of knowledgeable experts.

The fact remains that people use social media and specialist web sites for different reasons, and they all have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes the "strength" of the particular medium can also be its weakness - such as the sheer volume of posts and questions coming from a large site such as Facebook and Twitter may require an entire team with a pre-set set of instructions on how to deal with the thousands of comments and questions may be required. Its horses for courses - For instance if I had a loud contentious political agenda that I want to get in the news quickly, then it’s off to Twitter I go. If I want to wish my sister-in law in another country a happy birthday then Facebook is the obvious pathway. If I want to get in touch with that company rep that I met at a sales conference last week but I lost his card, then LinkedIn would be preferred option. Thinking of my own situation - when I look at my Facebook page I have a typical cross section of friends, colleagues and family but I know that none of them would be interested or even care about which airline flies to where and at what cost and burning which points to get there. If there were a Facebook AFF subgroup then I would imagine that none of my Facebook friends would want to see an AFF Facebook feed in my page or in their own feeds.

Whereas by going to AFF or Flyertalk with a question about using Velocity Points on Airline XYZ to fly to New York then I can guarantee that although its a small population, I can say that several people there will be well informed enough to reply to me about converting Velocity Points into XYZ and will also give me informative posts about alternative options of the best use of the points, and which seats on XYZ's B777-300 are the best for a night time flight etc! All often unprompted, but highly valuable information that is specifically useful for people with that enquiry.

Now say if a customer has a specific problem with the reservation or a change in flight times of a flight booking for instance - obviously the customer is going to want to contact the airline to fix the problem, and in order to efficiently do this they need to give exact booking references, who the pax are, where they are, what they want to happen/what their options are and any costs and/or notification which all seem to be complex but private interactions between an existing customer and a service provider so we can say that the initial “noise” created by the complaint has been effective in highlighting that there was a problem but not very instructive about how it was solved. Airlines are a little bit peculiar in some ways in that they have their own loyalty and status tier schemes with the implication that possibly different customer service recovery teams are allocated to different status/percieved cutomer value (and potential spend) customers.

This feeds into the statement that company reps are usually here for several reasons which I'll try to summarize, every service corporation should know where and why they spending money on social media manpower and would periodically review how useful/useless this expenditure is:

1. As part of a general PR/Spin or advertising campaign to expose or hint at a new product - usually in conjunction with a wider publicity campaign.

2. As a specific positive PR event within a larger product or aircraft launch - such as a lunch and tour to celebrate a new aircraft or route or lounge - a way of connecting with its high value customers.

3. "PR Firefighting" duties in response to a far-reaching but negative events e.g. think frequent flyer scheme devaluations, airline groundings, removal of benefits from customers, increases in surcharges etc - interesting to consider which event would receive more corrective action on say Twitter if both of these happened on the same day, say one of the Kardashians were flying from LAX to SYD in F and one of hers bags were lost and delayed by 24 hours vs Mrs Smith flying MEL-SYD having her existing booking in a J cabin not honored due to her not receiving notification, and being put in the Y cabin without any compensation, after being abused by the senior flight attendant and then by the airport manager at her destination! You may well roll your eyes and say #Firstworldproblems in both cases but I think it would be more valuable for the airline involved to spend time learning about what happened to Mrs Smith so that this doesn't happen to her again.

4. "Service recovery" duties to a very specific service failure by the airline to understand what has happened and then to attempt to rectify or compensate for it e.g. the very lengthy uncompensated downgrade from J to Y thread is a classic - usually resolved because the noise and anger about this particular failure is so embarrassing that the service provider eventually has to act (sometimes kicking and screaming).

5. As part of an information gathering capacity - what do frequent flyers think of our products? How do they game the system to maximize benefits for them? What would frequent flyers value more - priority boarding or lifetime status? What are the perceptions of our product vs our competitors? Are these perceptions justified/accurate? I would expect that infomation gathering scripts have to be tested and run in different environments and some platforms are easier to extract this sort of info from? Maybe facebook and Twitter is just a larger sample size if we are thinking in terms of polling accuracy, trend analysis or statistical validity?



I can see both sides of the argument about the economics and effectiveness and the perception that maybe the old Red Roo and Virgin Frequent Flyer was seen as a "personal concierge" to high value customers but in other cases I saw Red Roo and or Virgin Frequent Flyer intervene in specific cases where the complainant wasn't especially high status, but possibly more of a long term loyalist. In some cases the external facing complaint department of the airline was totally ineffective or even made the situation worse that the original problem! With the removal of these fairly minor roles and costs these service providers have even lost to ability to identify where they may have problems in the organizational structure of with specific parts of the airlines ground/air and call centre teams.


By this current action it seems that Qantas views participation in specialist forums as a “luxury” that it can’t/won’t provide or afford. Whether that’s due to the (lack of?) competition and/or pressure on margins or a typical short term tactic vs a long term goal thing is up to us to speculate on.

About the official company rep membership discussion, its just my own opinion, but I would suggest that the membership 'handles' of Red Roo, Qantas Frequent Flyer, Virgin Australia and Velocity Frequent Flyer etc be reserved so that in the future - if the airlines decide that they do want to compete again, or engage or participate here, that they can return their authenticated membership to service, and also to prevent mischievous or even fraudulent use by non-authenticated users.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The problem is that QF management didn't want to engage in the PR 'firefighting' side. None of the major issues were ever tackled by QF on these boards.

Termite: I think it would be pretty easy for a company rep to find posts relevant to them. I don't use the landing page, preferring to go direct to a forum. What didn't look good was four or five threads about legitimate complaints that went unanswered while the airline would comment on a thread that was positive.

 

[Jet L]

So just to review the current situation of AFF,....... ........that they can return their authenticated membership to service, and also to prevent mischievous or even fraudulent use by non-authenticated users.

Could you post a TL;DR version please?

 

[Princess Fiona]

So just to review the current situation of AFF, am I correct in that both Authenticated Company Reps from QF and VA are observer only/retired/no longer active on AFF? ... <snip>

Quite an essay there but pretty much spot on.
There are at least a couple of very active Facebook groups that I'm aware of. Questions such as the example you posted on Award travel are answered within minutes IME.
None of this activity is visible to any of your friends on Facebook unless they are also a member of that group.

 

[samh004]

Regardless of the spin put on it, my point remains in my mind very valid and a good reason and if I were a company rep like Red Roo, I would raise an eyebrow as to how hard it is to actually spot the posts relating to the business I am representing.

Click here (and bookmark that page): Qantas Frequent Flyer Program

However I concede the point on the fact Red Roo probably didn't intend to be a private support person to all of us.

I have never used such a page on any forum I have ever been to. I browse to the forum I wish to look at, opening different browser tabs for each forum/thread that I want to read.

In the case of Red Roo, I would be surprised if their link to AFF didn't directly open the QFF forum.

That's what I would think!

Could you post a TL;DR version please?

Just what I was thinking, wow!

 

[Groundhog]

It's a sad day when tweeting became the form of engagement.

"The Donald" espouses that every day.

Agree with the Princess in post 34.

Red Roo hasnt really been around for nearly a year so it's not as though she will be missed - she departed on a FASA a while ago when they were still worth something

 

[amaroo]

Anyone with the right license agreements can answer everything you'd want to know .... plus they know those extra special routings that earn those extra special SC

 

[DavidFlynn]

I think that Termite has raised some valid questions as to the decision making processes about company reps being active on specialist forums such as this one as opposed to being active on the broader "social media" outlets such as Facebook & Twitter.

Not going to quote all of EastWest's thinkpiece but I pretty much agree on every point. We're just seeing a natural evolution and it's naturally following commercial lines.

AFF would nowadays be considered 'social media' but let's remember, it began before 'social media' was even a term, even a 'thing'. Forums were specialist in nature, users tended to be more advanced and Net-savvy, but they satisfied that core human desire to connect and communicate and share.

Now that desire is still here but it's gone mainstream via Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram, just in the same way that the Internet became mainstream (post-Web 1.0) and computers became mainstream (post Windows/Mac GUI) and smartphones became mainstream (post-PDA).

And for most companies, the mainstream is the main game, and AFF will always be the home of the 0.00000001% (give or take a coupla zeros) who are specialists, super-savvy, in some areas influencers without doubt (and this is where an argument can be made that neglecting a site like this fails to take advantage of the multiplier effect of an influencer).. and at some point commercial decisions are made about where best to use resources, and we will almost always lose that argument because it's a numbers game, and the evolution of social media to a mainstream audience tilts the scale way way way in that direction.

Long story short: in most scenarios, an ex-RedRoo had to happen.

Happily, in some scenarios there's a case for a return of RedRoo in some hazy future, as part of a deliberate drive to cultivate and engage with that same specialist audience, in the same way that some US airlines go all-out for the avgeeks. Personally I question the commercial wisdom of that, and feel it's nice to do if you have the resourses but there's bread to be buttered before anything else is done.

 

[moa999]

Ultimately it's QFs decision whether they get value from the forum and come back.

More recently it had become an announcement platform with very few threads interacted in (fair enough they often become argumentative) and PMs reportedly not responded too.

While there are a number of CL/P1/P members on this forum I suspect PCV is lower than the average (as is $/SC ratios)

 

[samh004]

Anyone with the right license agreements can answer everything you'd want to know .... plus they know those extra special routings that earn those extra special SC

But they can't help you when it all goes wrong, you need to contact the company for that. Sometimes waiting on hold for 2 hours isn't good enough, and having to have a high follower count to receive a message back on Twitter really limits its usefulness. Facebook has the same issue as AFF, you can get negative commenters jumping on your issue.

While there are a number of CL/P1/P members on this forum I suspect PCV is lower than the average (as is $/SC ratios)

That's probably what it comes down to, we are savvy and know how to extract the best value, and thus our PCV's are lower. But we still represent a fair spend at the same time. It's an interesting balancing act.

 

[amaroo]

But they can't help you when it all goes wrong, you need to contact the company for that. .

Like everything - it depends on the problem and the person you engage to book the ticket. Some are better than others....

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Happily, in some scenarios there's a case for a return of RedRoo in some hazy future, as part of a deliberate drive to cultivate and engage with that same specialist audience, in the same way that some US airlines go all-out for the avgeeks. Personally I question the commercial wisdom of that, and feel it's nice to do if you have the resourses but there's bread to be buttered before anything else is done.

Putting on my big data cap - there is real value in remaining close with the influencers in a network of people. Not social media, news or blogs, but rather being able to pinpoint who key individuals are in a network of quality, weighted connections.
I would argue that AFF to some degree is one such super-connector. People absorb information from blogs and forums more than traditional media because it comes from personal experience and generally has emotion and honesty build in (ie: low risk of being sponsored content or PR). MIT has an interesting paper on what drives people to install mobile apps, and turns out that if your friends have the app, you're much more likely to install it as well. It's the member-tell-member effect.

I mean, just look at the Platinum One thread. You'll need to borrow a few extra hands to count the number of people who read the thread and have made a conscious choice not to pursue Platinum One, and/or to move their business to other loyalty programs. Heck - anyone that knows me in real life knows I made it my new life mission to talk people out of bothering with Platinum One - all because I didn't get any free upgrades as Plat1. This is data QF could have extracted from AFF, but didn't.

With this in mind, my view is AFF may be too slow in evolving into a product which RedRoo/Qantas/Any Airline needs as part of their strategic competitive coughnal. I agree with you - it's likely viewed as a 'blog' or low traffic 'social media' property and as such is compared against Twitter/FB/Snapchat/Whatever-millennials-use-these-days. Such comparison would put AFF towards the bottom of the line item media prioritization list. AFF needs to re-invent the business so that it can't be compared to the other social media sites in the eyes of the airlines.

Annnddd with that I'll stop myself there. I have a habit of giving away all the secrets for free as many of you reading this will understand

 

[DavidFlynn]

Putting on my big data cap - there is real value in remaining close with the influencers in a network of people. Not social media, news or blogs, but rather being able to pinpoint who key individuals are in a network of quality, weighted connections.

No argument at all, but that when you look at the avgeek set being engaged by some US airlines (as per my example) I'd argue they are not really influencers of that calibre – they're just aviation geeks, planespotters. That's the bit I find odd, compared to actual high-impact wide-reaching influencers of which AFF would have quite a few!