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WOM Wednesday Teleconference Recap -- Meeting Business Needs by Meeting Social Needs: How United Airlines Used Their Online Community to Generate Insights and Genuinely Connect with Their Customers

On Wednesday, February 27, 2008, WOMMA hosted a WOM Wednesday call featuring Dan Comenduley, Project Management, Customer Metrics and Insights for United Airlines, and Julie Wittes Schlack, SVP of Innovation and Design, and Manila Austin, Director of Research, of Communispace. The call centered around social networks, which are rich with potential to help you better understand your customers, form relationships with them, and directly or indirectly drive word of mouth. In formulating a social networking strategy, businesses should be asking themselves:


  • Big or small?

  • Public or private?

  • What are the best uses of large, public social networks and communities vs. small, exclusive ones?

In starting up their online community, United had to address all of these issues. United's decision to start on online community sprang from the company's goal of creating the best customer experience amongst all U.S. airlines -- including its low-cost competitors. According to Dan, creating an excellent customer experience is the key to building lifelong relationships with customers. And it's those relationships that count.

United decided to use an online community as a way of gaining consumer feedback and insights. Dan outlined the ways that United has used its private, invitation-only online community, including:


  • Targeting and learning about premium customers - the 13% of fliers that represent half of the airline revenue.

  • Gathering immediate response and deeper insights from a group of people who aren't afraid to give their honest opinions responses

  • Soliciting questions from community members that lead to innovations

After outlining United's case study specifically, speakers shared findings from a recent comparison of a large, public community and a small private one in terms of:

  • Quality of information
  • Honesty of posts
  • Helpfulness of information to both community members and the hosting organization
  • Frequency of posts
  • Quantity of posts
  • Value of community input for actionable business decisions.
Presenters illustrated theories about what specific social needs are met by the different types social media platforms.

Featured Speakers:


  • Dan Comenduley, Project Management, Customer Metrics and Insights, United
  • Julie Wittes Schlack, Senior Vice President, Innovation & Design, Communispace

  • Manila Austin, Ph.D., Director of Research, Communispace


Download Audio of WOM Wednesday