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A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

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Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#71

Post by dawnerd »

reacweb wrote: post #40
nathancahill wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way, tweets are great. It's the only way I've been able to connect to airlines immediately (once after waiting on hold for 4+ hours). Most quickly jump to private DMs. No more phonetic spelling my confirmation number over a bad phone connection. Problems get taken care of really quickly, but even it they aren't, I'm able to do other stuff while I wait, unlike waiting on hold, which really saps attention (constantl…

It is also my experience. I think companies react very quickly to tweets in the fear a tweet becomes viral.

Delta in particular. Whoever runs their twitter team gets it. They've always responded fairly quickly to dms and mentions.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#72

Post by dawnerd »

keebEz wrote: post #57

I had a stewardess dump a tray full of water on me and my laptop about an hour into a 5 hour flight. She couldn't give me more than a $50 credit, and I had to go to the customer service rep desk after the flight. 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…

I've almost had hot coffee spilled on my laptop. I've learned to keep an eye out for anyone walking by with anything spillable and hide my laptop. I get that sometimes they can't avoid it with turbulence/people bumping into them/whatever.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#73

Post by waqf »

twothamendment wrote: post #70

I've tried to tell "my airline" I hate it - by not flying, but they still update planes with smaller and smaller seats and less leg room. 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.

"@airline1 @airline2 @airline3 Which of you can sell me a seat from XXX to YYY that's large enough for an adult male?"

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#74

Post by bshacklett »

e59d134d wrote: post #66
camhenlin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that terrible for the person tweeting? Usually, it works out pretty well for them.

It works but I hate to bring up my issue publicly. So for me to Tweet an issue, it has to be pretty bad. Otherwise, I use official channel or just let it go.

That sounds like it's working exactly as it should. If everyone tweeted every little problem, each tweet would quickly be lost in the noise.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#75

Post by bshacklett »

kqr wrote: post #22
jorts wrote: post #18

Tweets are a terrible communication channel for solving customer service related issues. I run a customer support team, and almost all of our customer service related tweets end up with us either emailing the customer directly (if we can identify them) or asking them to email us so that we can get more information about their issue/concern. Text at least gives you a private chat where you can give information that yo…

> It helps drive to a much quicker resolution and overall provides a much better customer experience. 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 d…

Thats the fault of the company for not taking advantage an opportunity for improvement. I fail to see how that should be attributed to the medium.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#76

Post by composer »

twothamendment wrote: post #70

I've tried to tell "my airline" I hate it - by not flying, but they still update planes with smaller and smaller seats and less leg room. 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.

That's funny. But I like the idea of signaling the market some way. In a sufficiently competitive market even your opt-out signaling would would work. In the deaf market of the airlines however, scaled coordination enough to tip power back passengers, may be the only unfortunate answer. You would need to coordinate your "drive instead of flying" with enough people at the same time in the same geography.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#77

Post by twhb »

hammock wrote: post #48
nathancahill wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way, tweets are great. It's the only way I've been able to connect to airlines immediately (once after waiting on hold for 4+ hours). Most quickly jump to private DMs. No more phonetic spelling my confirmation number over a bad phone connection. Problems get taken care of really quickly, but even it they aren't, I'm able to do other stuff while I wait, unlike waiting on hold, which really saps attention (constantl…

>tweets are great. It's the only way I've been able to connect to airlines immediately (once after waiting on hold for 4+ hours) 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…

That doesn't add up. I'm sure these companies scale customer service staff to demand. Seems more plausible that Twitter's public nature means complaints there are measurably more harmful, so the companies intentionally devote more resources per complaint.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#78

Post by doug1001 »

nathancahill wrote: post #36
jorts wrote: post #18

Tweets are a terrible communication channel for solving customer service related issues. I run a customer support team, and almost all of our customer service related tweets end up with us either emailing the customer directly (if we can identify them) or asking them to email us so that we can get more information about their issue/concern. Text at least gives you a private chat where you can give information that yo…

No way, tweets are great. It's the only way I've been able to connect to airlines immediately (once after waiting on hold for 4+ hours). Most quickly jump to private DMs. No more phonetic spelling my confirmation number over a bad phone connection. Problems get taken care of really quickly, but even it they aren't, I'm able to do other stuff while I wait, unlike waiting on hold, which really saps attention (constantl…

so did i understand correctly: you were put on hold and while on hold, you were fed audio adverts, some prefaced with "Hello, I'm your customer service representative" (with the obvious intention to raise your attention, eg, pause your main task, take the phone off speaker and hold to your ear)?

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.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#79

Post by a3_nm »

wyager wrote: post #38
Old_Thrashbarg wrote: post #24

I'm disappointed to see more companies trending towards text messages. Text message should be used only for time-sensitive communication, but some companies (like my network carrier) text me to let me know things like my bill was auto-paid. 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 distrac…

You can mute messages from certain contacts on both android and iOS. You'll get a notification, but it won't make a sound or wake your phone.

Yes, but this is very poor compared to how precise you can get with email filters. I use git to version 1000-line Sieve filter to route incoming mail, I couldn't do the same with texts (thankfully they are still much more rare than email).

So, like the parent of your comment, I find that email is a much better medium for non-time-sensitive communication than SMS.

Re: A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

#80

Post by pbarnes_1 »

personlurking wrote: post #32
pjc50 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason to go public with a complaint on Twitter is lack of faith in the dispute resolution process - which is usually justified. 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 once had a problem with my old bank (Citi, IIRC) and tweeted them. They connected me to a CSR 'on steroids' who solved my problem lickety split (I gave him my number, he called immediately, I told him the issue, hung up and he called back within 5 minutes to say 'problem solved'). I was amazed that such people w/in big corps exist. Be nice if that were the rule and not the exception.

Those people always exist, but they cost a lot more than level 1 people. It's just impossible to scale that level of support to 100% of the customer base without escalation etc.
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