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The People Who Read Your Airline Tweets (theatlantic.com)
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.
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.
"At American, the average social-media customer-support person has been at the company for 17 years." - This is a major plus. I worked in call center in the past and the turn over rate is insanely high. We could turn over a team of 15-20 call center reps entirely in the matter of a few months. If this is a way that companies can get me in touch with a person who has at least some investment of their time and effort into the company I'm all for it. I'd much rather be typing over twitter to a long term employee than talking of the phone to an outsource call center rep who has zero care about my issue.
Sent from my TARDIS
I had an issue with a firm, and had spent an hour with customer service trying to sort it out, only to be stonewalled by an asshole manager.
Gave up, someone suggested 'complain on twitter, you will DEFINITELY get a reply'...and sure enough writing an acerbic tweet about it and...voila, within about 5 minutes, I was contacted by a 'customer service team leader' who constructively dealt with my issue and we came to a compromise solution within about a half hour.
FAR better to tweet angrily than to engage their 'customer avoidance support line'.
-Styopa
I tweeted about how I was (quite happily) boozing it up for free on my flight, and they responded almost immediately.
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.
Oh yes... I remember the time when running a news show was a bit more work than broadcasting the latest viral tweets.
bickerdyke
I bought a one way ticket home after four years abroad recently. It was super expensive. When I hit the "buy" button (after much agonising about the cost), I got a "generic error" on the website that indicated it didn't work - the whole process basically died. I tried again - same error. I tried a third time - and it worked. I assumed it was a temporary error that had cleared.
Of course, 15 minutes later I got three tickets (for the exact same flight) and was charged three times. I called them immediately and was told it was a "website glitch" (the manner in which they explained it to me made it sound like this was not an uncommon problem) and they'd refund me immediately (subject to usual credit card refund processing times).
Two weeks later I checked my credit card and saw I had been refunded - partially. Each refund was almost 10% short of the purchase price. Turns out I had been charged in AUD and refunded in GBP, and after currency conversion & credit card penalties I was out of pocket almost $300.
I called their support back & explained the problem. They blamed the bank first, so I called them to confirm, which they did. I called back and had a very polite conversation with a guy who told me they couldn't help me and I'd need to contact their Customer Care team via email because it was an unusual problem.
I did this. Waited two weeks for the (inevitable) response - we can't help with refunds, please call the phone team. Explained they'd sent me to them to no avail.
Gave up and went to the Twitter team. Had to explain the problem several times in stages to get through the usual checklist but eventually someone senior picked it up, realised it was a problem, and refunded me.
It's embarrassing that in 2017 large companies can basically be so incompetent that they can just put you into a support circle like this. There is absolutely no reason Twitter should exist as an emergency escape hatch for people stuck in that cycle, but I'm glad it does. I imagine once their traditional support load dries up because everyone gives up on it, they'll simply assume they can axe the whole department and then be totally surprised when their Twitter teams ask for more staff.
I don't think people mind that Airlines have effective social media teams. However, what people like me do object to is the fact that an email or phone call or (gasp) paper letter goes into a black hole - But a tweet? You have a cheerful response, often with a resolution to the issue, within 30 minutes. I'd like companies to treat all communications equally and importantly - Yet because tweets (and, to a lesser extent, Facebook post) are public and searchable, they get higher priority.
Corporations have always wanted to provide a superior grade of service to people of means and influence.
Now they can: they can judge your means by how you dress (all those security cameras need to pay for themselves), and your influence by the number and reach of your followers.
You can bet some company is already offering up a service to instantly assess any given Twitter user's suasion score. Even better, those with low suasion scores who get routed to the cheap and disgusting call center will remain as bitter as ever, but who can they tell?
I foresee that many people in America of low disposable income might try to travel somewhere a few times on the tubular cattle car, have a sequence of mediocre experiences with car rental companies, restaurants, hotels, and attractions, then decide that travelling is a shitty way to spend what little money they have, resulting in a large, home-body underclass who's understanding of the world is filtered through the all-seeing eye of Fox News (or its less geriatric, post-boomer replacement).
Travel was always a high carbon activity (doomed to be yanked away from the underclass at petroleum plateau), but the upside (while it lasted as a universal aspiration) was a more reasonable public discourse about world affairs.
The MD State Police blocked me after I criticized their waste of man power sitting on the highway catching speeders instead of solving crimes. The government doesn't want criticism.
I remember when CNN ran a "you make the news" thing and it was about sending them videos and "tweets" and your own spin and such. I say "tweets" because I can't remember if twitter existed yet or if it was brand new.