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The People Who Read Your Airline Tweets (theatlantic.com)

Posted by msmash on from the other-side-of-those-tweets dept.

From a piece on The Atlantic: At first, the idea of a company directly tweeting at its customers was very strange. Nowadays, people have gotten used to having back-and-forths with customer service representatives. In any given hour, JetBlue makes public contact with 10, 15, 20 different people. American Airlines receives 4500 mentions an hour, 70 to 80 percent of them on Twitter. Both companies staff their social teams with long-time employees who are familiar with the airlines' systems. Both hire internally out of the "reservations" team, so they know how to rebook flights and make things happen. At American, the average social-media customer-support person has been at the company for 17 years. Every major airline has a team like this. Southwest runs what it calls a "Listening Center." American Airlines calls it their "social-media hub" in Fort Worth, Texas. Alaska has a "social care" team in Seattle that responds to the average tweet for help in two minutes and 34 seconds, according to a report by Conversocial. Most of the time, it's a worthy, but low-profile job. But not always. This is the strangest thing about people tweeting with airlines: They're just a routine part of how the business works now. Tweets and Facebook posts go out via a social-media team and a customer-service team responds to the incoming problems, snark, and jokes.

2 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Stop it, it's annoying and disrespectful. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dear companies:

    Please stop trying to be trendy and hip with your relaxed attitudes and by using social media. I am a paying customer and I demand formality and professionalism or you'll never get my money. You are not my friend and you are not hip. Just do what I pay you to do and spare your lip.

  2. I'd prefer to be able to contact them in private by johannesg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wouldn't it be neat, if I had a question for an airline, if I could somehow contact them? Preferably without having to resort to pressure tactics on a public forum?

    But alas, contacting an airline is next to impossible. You can deal with endless automated systems, but an actual human who can respond to your actual questions? Forget it. Not gonna happen.

    It's good to know that Twitter is an option, and I guess I'll have to get a Twitter account now just so I can deal with issues I'd much rather deal with in private, but I guess that's the way the world works now.