Air France has become the latest high-profile company to abandon at least some of its presence on Twitter after the French flag carrier announced on Friday that it would no longer offer customer service via direct message on the popular social media site.
The Paris-based airline said the decision to ditch direct message customer support on Twitter was the result of a change of terms of conditions on the platform.
Air France provided scant details about the decision, but the airline is by far the only company to have severed some ties with Elon Musk’s Twitter in recent days. Earlier this week, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would no longer post service alerts and information on Twitter.
The MTA decision is believed to have stemmed from Twitter’s new charging fulls for posting automatic updates to the site.
Organisations like the MTA used to be able to plug into Twitter and post automated updates via an application programming interface, but Twitter has recently started charging for this service, and some reports suggest the site wanted the MTA to cough up $50,000 a month to post its automated service alerts.
It remains unclear why Air France no longer wants customers to slide into its DMs but the decision could hurt the airline more than Twitter.
Twitter has become a go-to option for many consumers facing immediate customer service issues, and one (Twitter-funded) study found that airlines which use the platform to offer direct customer support could drive increases in revenue potential of 3 percent.
Companies that offer DM customer support on Twitter also score better in customer satisfaction surveys and benefit from more customer recommendations.
Late last year, United Airlines joined an ever-growing list of major corporations that have pulled the plug on advertising on Twitter in the wake of the Musk takeover. United refused to provide a reason for “temporarily” suspending Twitter advertising.
Musk reportedly wants major brands and companies to pay $1,000 per month for a ‘gold’ verified checkmark which replaced the legacy blue checkmark system. Air France does not currently have any checkmark suggesting that the airline is not paying Twitter to be verified.
Bad move by Air France. Then again, they aren’t famed for customer service so not all that surprising.