Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) platform was chosen by the software company Luminoso to talk about a new method to rank the airlines. With increasing number of travelers giving their feedback on the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, the collective effort of these tweets and posts can reflect a lot about the companies that work hard to satisfy their customers.
Many factors considered for ranking
Luminoso spokeswoman Chrysta Olson said in an email that the company “analyzed over 150,000 tweets in which users directly mentioned American Airlines, Delta, United, Jet Blue and Virgin America.” Luminoso has ranked the airlines on the basis of “customer service,” “seating” and “in flight entertainment” with the help of a “conceptual text analytics software.” In other words, the company studied the language used in the social media mentions for these five airlines.
Luminoso has ranked Virgin America as number 1, which won maximum applauds from its customers. Last spot was given to the United Airlines, which was subjected to maximum customer criticism. Twitter users tweeted on a number of subjects such as cancellations and delays, luggage, customer service and seating, and a total of 157,330 tweets were analyzed.
Ranking based Twitter feedback’s can’t be generalized
According to an article on re/code, Luminoso has used a natural language processing technology to identify these 157,000 tweets. If post for a particular airline mentions words such as “overhead bin” and “hate,” it will affect the rating in the luggage category. Similarly, words like “wifi” and “love” might enhance the ranking in the entertainment category. Specific category ranking were distributed with JetBlue taking top numbers in the crew and entertainment category, and Delta taking the prize for the best seating. American or United were in the last spot in all the categories expect for one.
Findings of Luminoso cannot be generalized because the Twitter views and shares reflect only a portion of the feedback’s. Weather, events, promotions or any other news could also affect the public sentiments at any time.
Another limitation is many times users miss to tag the travel provider making it almost impossible to identify the feedback for that airline.
