Shortly after midnight last Friday (Aug 17), a visitor to the WestJet Facebook page posted a note on the message board, outlining the experience of a friend with the airline.

Blaine Lavoie simply wanted to praise the airline for what appeared to be excellent customer service during what was clearly an emotional and stressful time for her friend. Over the course of the next few days, Lavoie’s post started getting a lot of so-called “likes”, reaching almost 180,000 by the beginning of the working week. Furthermore, fellow fans of the WestJet page started commenting in their droves, adding their appreciation for what was essentially a decent gesture by the Canadian low cost carrier.Over 9,000 comments have since been added to the thread. No travel provider on the planet can generate this amount of positive PR by itself. But therein lies one of the problems with social media – such was the sheer volume of positive sentiment toward the airline (and scepticism that perhaps any such story as this may have been planted in some way by the airline or its marketing folk) that some users questioned its authenticity.

Although Lavoie did not reply to requests for comment to clarify the story, WestJet has now responded to many of the subsequent posts asking for verification. This is one of the responses it issued to one sceptical commenter:

“This story is, by and large, true. When it came to our attention today (even though it was a month ago!) we investigated what happened.

“A few minor details have been misinterpreted and have overstated our generosity to a degree. However, our people did indeed go above and beyond to assist this gentleman and we are very proud of what they did.”

So a humble and honest response from WestJet that serves as an example of how to engage with not only positive sentiment but also those quizzical about the validity of content in social media. Since the post went viral over the weekend, one of those involved in the incident in the first place has come forward:

“I am the daughter of James Murrin and yes this is true. And yes some very minor detail were overstated but, our family will forever be touched and in debt to the love, consideration and generosity that WestJet has shown us. I hope anyone anywhere in the world who has the oppoutunity to fly will fly with WestJet.

“To see that they get the recognition that they deserve I will make my mission. Bill kennedy(emergency support team) All of the staff at Halifax and Hamilton airport THANK YOU.”

What this history makes clear is the importance of really care for the clients instead of just designing an artifical social media strategy. And that only happens when the people is more important and has more empowerment than the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the pressure of being well valued in the social media should never make forget the business priorities and rules. A good example is what has happened with the Mother-of-two Suzy McLeod, who protested the €300 (£236) she was charged on August 15 to print out five boarding passes for a flight home to the UK from Spain. The day after the flight, she posted her complaint on a Rayanair Facebook page. McLeod asked Facebook readers to ‘like’ her post if they felt the charge was unfair. Well, over 350,000 had agreed with her just five days after she published the post. On top of this, over 180,000 readers posted a comment of their own. Many backed McLeod’s complaint and said the charge was ridiculous and outrageous. Some even described their own negative Ryanair experiences.

McLeod explains that she, her parents, two kids and husband went on a 15-day holiday, so they couldn’t print the return boarding passes. This is because the passes can only be printed two weeks before the flight. She had the passes on her phone as PDF documents and thought they would be sufficient.  However, there were some Facebook users who pointed out that Ryanair makes clear in their booking emails that boarding passes have to be printed out before arriving at the airport. One agreed that printing out the boarding passes ahead of time is annoying and that the penalty is outrageously expensive, but they note that the airline warns about the charges ahead of time. The user added that travellers should read the small print and abide by the conditions or stop using low-cost carriers.

Clearly, for Ryanair it would be easier to reduce the price of printing the boarding passes and avoid this negative PR. But that would go against its business model as low cost carrier, focused on costs and punctuality, as it will supposed the need of an airport checking infrastructure and serious delays in the checking process. Both things will undermine Ryanair´s perfomance and in mid term would be much more pernicious than the referred attack in Facebook. Thus, never a company should be a slave of social media criticism, as in many cases those are provoked by what I call «obligations lazyness» on the side of the clients. In this particular case, it not defendeble that the passenger was not able to print, in 15 days in Alicante -where there are hundreds of cybercafes and alike- the boarding passes, when Ryanair very clearly advises the price of printing them, which has been fixed in order to encourage people to bring their boarding passes with them.