A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I once had an insurance company reach out to me after I posted about them on Livejournal. They connected me to someone with the ability to fix problems! Must have found me through search as well.
I was amazed that such people w/in big corps exist. Be nice if that were the rule and not the exception.
Are there measurements behind this claim? It could be that you are optimizing for customer support experience rather than customer experience.
I mean, with the resources, a Twitter interaction could look like
Customer: your service sucks.
Support: I'm sorry to hear you have that experience. Is there anything we can do to make up for it?
Customer: don't send me a bill for next month and I'll stay as your customer.
Support: Sure thing. Hope you can enjoy the service more in the future.
This type of exchange is bad for the company only in that it does not provide any valuable feedback, but as long as you have other ways of getting that, I bet you the customer will feel content.
Support: if you would like us to improve our service for your needs, you are free to send constructive feedback to feedback@example.com.
The reason most companies want the feedback first is because after the customer has received compensation there is little incentive to help the company out. It's viewed as a transaction of feedback for compensation.
But asking the user to be detailed over Twitter is probably futile, given the character limit.
The check in staff was completely useless, kept sending me to AA people to solve it even though it was BA metal and ticketing. AA sent me back, and again and again. Called support, outsourced and completely useless. Flight was getting closer and closer. Tweeted about it and that team actually solved my problem within 15 minutes being polite and on the ball.
Edit: highly relevant and insightful http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-... http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-...
Tweets are just an extension of this. It's immediate negative public PR, and there's people whose job it is to manage it. You get an outsized amount of leverage in the "how will my issues get solved" negotiation.
That is true, but has less to do with the platform and more to do with how few people are on it, compared to how many dedicated social media person(s) there are responding.
In other words, so few people know how to send a tweet (vs send an email or make a phone call) that you are competing for more attention with less other customers. If your grandma suddenly became more comfortable sending a tweet than making a phone call, that would change.
(Corollary: they might have less ability to actually solve routine problems because they don't know the relevant protocols. But they'll make you feel important when trying)
If they did, 45 minute hold times wouldn't be a thing.
I had never heard of this until now. A new low. these guys are really focused on making sure those 14 minutes on hold actually feels like 14 whole painful minutes of waiting.
the reason you are calling CS to begin with is almost certainly because of some mistake they made; every minute you are on hold compounds that mistake, now this.
Some change. Little or no acknowledgement.
Thouggh I think most of us have no idea of commss and support at Google scale: 3 billion plus profile registrations -- this is Android, Gmail, Youtube, etc.
My problem is not that I hate airlines. My problem is that I hate (some of) them because they keep ignoring my complaints. Even when it is "hugely expensive" for them to listen to me, they still keep me around for hours.
If the medium were the reason of traveler's unhappiness, all problems would have been solved by now with Twitter/Facebook/WhatsApp. Social media gives users (some) power back, by making public shaming a real possibility. Texting won't change that anytime soon.
Think about the other communication platforms. People hate calling, because it usually means waiting on hold to get connected. Email can suck, because it can be days before you get a response. Face-to-face can work, but airlines seem to train their desk agents in customer service warfare.
That leaves texting. It keeps customer out of the face of agents. It's private. Turnaround is faster than email, and you can lodge your complaint in the same amount of characters as a Tweet. "Why do a social media mention on Twitter when you can text us directly at your leisure?" It's the perfect way to subvert public shaming. Anything that can be handled in SMS can be handled through Twitter DMs after you call them out for your terrible experience.
Forgive typos I typed this on an iPhone
Especially electronic.
When I respond negatively to surveys I get upgraded almost immediately, others have noticed this trend as well.
Only thing I ever could tie to surveys/feedback was AA comping me 5k RDM after one particularly horrid flight.
Most of the flying was due to working remote for a company in the bay area; now I work for a different company and actually live out here, and don't have to play the frequent-flyer game anymore. For less than what I used to spend on economy tickets with upgrade hopes, I just buy business/first class on the occasions when I want it.
Anecdotally I have noticed slightly better treatment from that, and I know the gate agents and flight crew have status listed on the manifest and so can guess who's up front because they bought the ticket and who's up there because of an upgrade. Which I guess says something about the priorities of the airline and the usual behavior of the status-holder.
But I question the motives - is it a way to improve customer service or is it really just a shroud to help cut down on the "social media dirty laundry" posts?
As much as I applaud the idea of quick issue-resolution via text, I don't think texting will actually solve 90% of the issues customers face.
You can text in situations you can't/shouldn't call, such as on the can or while someone is sleeping.
You may want to get quick business done in public place but don't want to annoy bystanders or have them listen in on personal information you may want to talk about.
Texting a question and waiting for an answer is waaaayyy better than sitting on hold listening to elevator music interrupted by "your call is important to us."
Title is stupid though.
Real-world example: Trying to drop bags at the counter, there's a huge line and not enough stations open. Flight is boarding in 30 minutes. Which would improve your chances of getting some help at the counter: SMS or a Facebook post?
Lots of companies already provide text-based customer service (although usually as some crappy custom web-based thing, not SMS) and I often take advantage of it. It usually takes longer than calling, but it takes up a lot less of my attention and is easier to deal with, especially when I have to give or receive some long number or code.
First thing he said after I explained to him the situation was "Do you have twitter?". Confused, he explained to me that it was the first thing he had to tick off on the customer resolution checklist. I get it, but a bit of insult to injury.
[1] http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/american-airlines-ea... [2] https://gist.github.com/iL3D/59df64947d42828d848ebfc1651a312...
I'll be in the middle of coding and my phone goes off, so I stop everything I'm doing to see that my monthly was autopaid. With email, I check it every 2 hours to minimize distractions and I can also use filters to ignore certain routine emails, but companies text messaging me feels like an intrusion into my privacy.
> Text message should be used only for time-sensitive communication
That's how I use it as well, but I'm not sure we're in the majority. To the phone company, a text message is the less time sensitive way to communicate. Time sensitive communications are handled with an actual phone call.
So, like the parent of your comment, I find that email is a much better medium for non-time-sensitive communication than SMS.
2) [Almost?] all companies let you opt out of text message notifications and/or customize it, I've never seen a company that didn't. For example, for Verizon I just go into "Manage your communications and alerts" online and set it to "email" rather than "text." Phone companies set text by default only because they already have your phone number.
3) Assuming you don't have a dumb phone, this is a solved problem, just put your phone on "do not disturb" while you are working. You can set it to where priority numbers (like your spouse) still give you notifications for emergencies. You can even set "do not disturb" to automatically coincide with your calendar events and/or time of day.
If you're checking email every 2, texts should be every 4. If you're getting urgent messages over text often, someone else is making a mistake. Most people I know don't even read texts for hours later.
Maybe I need to tweet to several airlines every time I drive somewhere instead of fly. I'd prefer to arrive in hours, but the last time I flew reminded me of why it had been years since I was on a plane.
It doesn't have to be that way, but probably will. This is an entirely different category, but my local hardware store started publishing a number to text with any questions about home repair and whatnot, and they're actually great, responding quickly with good answers and sometimes a bit of humor. Really awesome customer service.
Not saying both won't happen, but you give yourself the option to fix the issue before it's really "a problem".
This was a huge time saver from my perspective. No reading of order numbers, no waiting on hold, no confirmation of order details. The real value in my situation was the delivery of my full context to the appropriate service that could help me. I think WeChat is riding this exact wave.
I would typically make an email alias for a company that was [company-name]@my-domain.com and use that as my contact email for correspondence with said company.
So, I was doing something with the DMV online - and I created the alias "dmv@my-domain.com" to communicate with them via...
They sent their lawyers after me and sent me cease and desist letters telling me that my use of dmv@ was a violation of their copyright and that I would "confuse users"
I tried to explain to the DMV (yes dept of motor vehicles) how ridiculous this whole thing was and that the email address was for their use only - and that as a state agency, they don't have a consumer brand and that anyone with the initials of DMV, like David Michael Vincent would be using DMV in their emails etc...
They persisted and were annoying enough I just deleted their alias...
This has the side benefit of making it obvious who's responsible for selling my email address and makes it easy to ameliorate being signed up for unsolicited email lists by burning the email address. (A popular tech journalism outfit has been the worst offender in recent years.)
They recently completed YC Start-up School.
Full disclosure, I am a very minor investor in the business.
I see it's only Facebook and Telegram ATM, we're using another platform that does Twitter. And the holy grail would be Whatsapp (the day Whatsapp opens up the API they're going to rack up money).
Basically, a fund you can donate to that then looks for lawsuits against the airlines to underwrite Peter Thiel/Gawker/Hulk Hogan style.