Virgin Atlantic Airways Case Study - Send Word Now

CASE STUDY: Virgin Atlantic AirwaysHow Virgin Atlantic Airways Uses Send Word Nowto Communicate During EmergenciesVirgin Atlantic Airways, one of the world’s leading long-haul airlines, was founded in 1984 and currentlyhas 38 aircraft in its fleet. From its main base in London, Virgin Atlantic services destinations as far apartas Las Vegas, Tokyo, Delhi, Boston and Shanghai. The airline offers service from ten U.S. cities to Londonand onto a range of long-haul destinations worldwide. With such an expansive network, the organizationplaces special emphasis on safety, security, and crisis management. At London headquarters, thecompany’s central crisis management team is responsible for developing crisis management plans forVirgin Atlantic locations worldwide. There, Resilience Manager Tiggy Thiagarajah depends on Send WordNow’s on-demand notification and response software to communicate with his staff, and local crisis teams,whenever there is a major disruption.A Lesson In Critical CommunicationOn May 22, 2011, a cloud of ash originating fromthe Grímsvötn volcano in Iceland began to driftover European airspace, disrupting travel andthreatening the operations of many major airlines,including Virgin Atlantic. Memories of the 2010eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which costthe industry over a billion dollars, were still freshin the company’s mind.“When this cloud began to form, we immediatelythought of the impact and disruption it causedto our customers in 2010 ,” explains Thiagarajah,“Fortunately, the industry has learned a lot sincethen. By using Send Word Now to communicatewith our crisis management teams, we were ableto coordinate a much more fluid response tothis threat. Our experience allowed us to makedecisions early on, and Send Word Now allowedus to send this information at the click of a button.This time around, no flights were grounded.”At A Moment’s NoticeAs head of the company’s crisis managementteams, Thiagarajah is responsible for deployingSend Word Now, whenever a major eventthreatens the company’s operations. “Wheneverthere is a crisis,” he explains, “we immediatelyturn to Send Word Now’s messaging platformto communicate with all of our support teams,department heads, and relevant parties. Usingthe Get Word Back response feature, we can alsodetermine very quickly which staff members areavailable to help, if need be.”The organization distinguishes between two typesof major incidents, and sends out differing levelsof alerts accordingly. During minor events, such aspower outages or regional crises, Virgin Atlantic’scrisis management team sends out “amber” alerts.For these, the team uses Send Word Now tosend updates to predetermined groups of peopleand initiate conference calls via the platform’sConference Bridge functionality. A “red” alertwould be used for major aircraft incidents; in such acase, Virgin Atlantic would use Send Word Now tomessage all users at once, across all modalities.Organization and PlanningApart from the Get Word Back and ConferenceBridge, Thiagarajah and his crisis managementteam depend on Send Word Now’s Scenariosfeature to communicate even more quickly duringtime-sensitive incidents. This feature, which allowsusers to pre-populate customized, event-specificmessages for easier activation, “allows us tosend out red alerts at the click of a button,” saysThiagarajah. “They are extremely useful for keymessages in the early phases of a crisis.”Virgin Atlantic also keeps its contact information upto date by using Send Word Now’s simple recipientself-update feature, which allows the company’s(800) 388-4796 • www.sendwordnow.com • info@sendwordnow.com

staff members to provide current contact detailson their own by clicking a dedicated link. UsingSend Word Now’s comprehensive groupingfeatures, the crisis management team is then ableto organize these contacts into three distinct, yetflexible, groups. “We maintain a crisis managementgroup, a support team group, and a customerservice team group,” explains Thiagarajah. “Someevents, such as a customerrelations issue, may only apply toone specific team, but wheneverthere is a major event we caneasily target all three. Having thatflexibility is invaluable.”Why Send Word Now“In the coming years, I lookforward to expanding the SendWord Now system within ourorganization,” says Thiagarajah.“As we integrate the platform into our normalbusiness operations, our staff members willbecome even more familiar with it, therebyallowing us to use it more effectively during acrisis.”Thiagarajah explains that Virgin Atlantic selectedSend Word Now for many reasons that also made itstand apart from its competitors. One of those wasreliability: “Send Word Now is the only companyoffering a 100% uptime guarantee. Many othersystems don’t offer that, but this peace of mind isvery important to me.”“Our old notification system was much slowerand was much more difficult to manage,” he adds.“Send Word Now is incredibly fast and easy to use.“Send Word Now is the onlycompany offering a 100%uptime guarantee. Many othersystems don’t offer that, but thispeace of mind is very importantto me.”-Tiggy ThiagarajahResilience ManagerVirgin Atlantic AirwaysIt’s an incredibly easy way to notify many peoplewithin a short time, and it is the most user-friendlynotification platform on the market.”The Send Word Now AdvantageBy tailoring its services to the needs of itscustomers, Send Word Now consistently providesinnovative notification solutions that outmatch itscompetitor’s offerings. Through itsBlackBerry and iPhone integrations,Conference Bridge functionality,and unique features such as multilingualalerts, customers can takeadvantage of Send Word Now’scustomizable platform to maximizetheir communication efforts. And ontop of its robust software features,Send Word Now offers best-in-classcustomer support services that justcan’t be beat.Send Word Now is the leading provider of ondemandalerting and response services for bothroutine and emergency communication. Theeasy-to-use, web-based emergency notificationservice is used by government agencies,municipalities, universities, non-profit organizationsand businesses, including many Fortune 500companies, to ensure fast, effective, two-waycommunication in real-time. Send Word Now’s AlertTracer® provides a full audit trail of messages sentand received for after-action reporting and followup.Designed to reach anyone, anywhere, anytime,with any device over any type of connection, SendWord Now’s mass notification system is capable oftransmitting hundreds of thousands of voice andtext messages in minutes.(800) 388-4796 • www.sendwordnow.com • info@sendwordnow.com