As originally reported by Tnooz.com, Jet2 have axed their Twitter account. That’s right, not suspended, but euthanized.

According to Jet2, keeping the account running was taking up too much of their time and resources. It was considered easier just to cut the services altogether rather than continue to keep the account up to date. To my knowledge, this is the first time we’ve seen something like this in travel, and I doubt it will be the last, at least with bigger companies.

Those who listened to the “Gurus” and “Ninjas” of social media over the last few years would’ve thought Twitter was going to be a silver bullet – some magical new revenue stream. For some, this might have been the case, but the closing of the Jet2 account proves that expectations might have been set a tad high.

At it’s simplest Twitter connects people with brands. This is no different from email or even the telephone for businesses like Jet2. Accepting the fact that Twitter represents an amazing customer service opportunity, rather than trying to force sales down their followers throats might have been a more sustainable approach.

To highlight someone whose doing a really good job with Twitter for customer service, I always mention Telstra. The Australian telecommunications company connect users with complicated questions that come through twitter to the rest of their customer service team in a measurable way by directing them to this form:

From time to time, the account also talks about new products, but majority of the chatter is between frustrated customers and support staff. This kind of thing falls in to a black hole of ROI we call brand building and customer service. I have taken the effort to demonstrate exactly how this would look in the diagram below:

All joking aside, this is what the bulk of company Twitter accounts are going to be about, a place for the masses to make contact. Jet2 have shown us what happens when you expect too much and dedicate too little to the medium, it ends in tears.

I hope when other brands give up on Twitter as a source of revenue, they at least consider making it part of a their customer service and retention strategy rather than simply turning out the lights.

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