Data Intro

The purpose of this analysis is to compare and contrast United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, two of the biggest airlines in the United States & across the world. More specifically, the purpose of this analysis is to take a holistic view of United’s (@United) and Southwest’s (@SouthwestAir) Twitter accounts in an attempt to get a consensus as to how satisfied their customers are and come to a conclusion as to which airline provides a better service for their customers.

This analysis is broken out into 3 different sections that attempt to overall answer if customers are more satisfied flying on United or Southwest. The 3 different sections are characterized with 1 defining question. These 3 questions are as follows:

  1. How often does United and Southwest use Twitter?
  2. What are some of the most common words included in tweets from United and Southwest Airlines?
  3. Is the language used in tweets by United & Southwest generally more positive, negative, or a mix of both?

In attempt to answer these key questions, there are also a series of visualizations that accompany each section.

All of this data was collected via Twitter using the rtweet package in R. All of this data was collected on May 3, 2022; it captures the 1,000 most recent tweets from the Southwest & United Twitter accounts.

Twitter Usage

How often does United and Southwest use Twitter?

United and Southwest Twitter usage is key to understanding if it is a reliable tool for measuring customer/airline interaction & satisfaction. The first data table is for Southwest; the second table is for United. The higher numbers represent days in April, and the lower numbers signify days in May.

On the surface, both airlines use Twitter very regularly. Both airlines have multiple days where they have made more than 100 tweets, which is a lot of tweets! This definitely alludes to the fact that their Twitter accounts can be significant contributors to customer service and satisfaction.

Most common words

What are some of the most common words included in tweets from United and Southwest Airlines?

Analyzing the most common words included in each airline’s tweets is a key indicator into their ultimate goals and purposes for their Twitter accounts. The first bar graph above is for Southwest, and the second bar graph is for United. These bar graphs indicate words that appear more than 100 times in each airline’s tweets.

For Southwest, some of the most common terms include “dm,” “t.co,” “https,” and “confirmation”. This is interesting, but not surprising. All of these allude to potential travel issues that Southwest would like to deal with in DM (direct messaging). https & t.co could be extensions to their DM forum or could also be a link to a complaint form or someone in customer service. This is further backed up by the term “confirmation,” which typically points to the fact that a customer might have had a problem with their travel experience (could be delays, baggage issues, etc.) & Southwest needs their confirmation number to look at their customer’s travel in depth. However, we see that beneath this that there are some positive terms, such as “hope.” So, we do get some sort of more positive spin, presumably, as well.

For United, we see some of the same trends as Southwest. “dm,” “t.co,” “https,” and “confirmation” make up 4 of the top 5 most common terms in tweets from United. However, there isn’t some more positive terms like seen with Southwest. Instead of seeing terms such as “hope,” there are terms such as “apologize” and “assistance.” This does allude to the fact that the majority of their tweets are apologies to customers for travel issues, and they’ll try their best to work with their customers to fix their issues.

Sentiment Analysis

Is the language used in tweets by United & Southwest generally more positive, negative, or a mix of both?

Sentiment analysis is centered around analyzing each word in each tweet and determining what kind of emotions it conveys or evokes. Each word is assigned a sentiment term/score. These graphs analyze some of the most impactful positive and negative words contributing to the overall sentiment analysis of Southwest’s and United’s tweets. A filter is applied on these graphs to only show some of the more popular positive and negative words, as opposed to every term.

The main thing to draw from these graphs is that Southwest, generally, has more valuable positive and negative values than United. The overwhelming positive term that is contributing to that is “free.” However, both airlines seem to use/have very similar positive terms. “Patience” and “glad” are two notable ones that have a great positive impact for both United and Southwest.

Both airlines have significant negative scores, but all generally follow the same concept. Both mention some form of “delay” and also get a lot of negativity from “regret” and “inconvenience.”

Conclusion

United and Southwest airlines both use Twitter very frequently, oftentimes tweeting more than 100 times a day (through both original tweets and responses to customers). However, there does seem to be a greater satisfaction and overall experience with Southwest Airlines when compared against United Airlines.

Analyzing the most recent 1,000 tweets from each airline’s Twitter account, it seems as though both use their Twitter accounts as alternate customer relation tools, dealing with disgruntled customers who have travel issues. However, there are more tweets from Southwest that are overall more positive and deal with praise from customers. Evidence for this is how impactful terms such as “kudos” and “love” were on Southwest’s overall sentiment score. Further, Southwest is known, as part of their branding, for their care, evidenced through their heart branding & commitment to each customer. Southwest also uses the word love as “luv” often, as well, and although it is not measured as part of the sentiment analysis, it certainly helps their sentiment score in a very positive manner!