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 you wouldn't publicly post on twitter. It helps drive to a much quicker resolution and overall provides a much better customer experience. If I were in their shoes I would 100% be pushing for this so that I can do my job better. It will definitely reduce the noise on twitter, but I don't think that's the main motivator here, just a nice side effect.
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 (constantly hearing ads that start with "Hello, I'm your customer service representative. Ad text here.").
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.
Tweets makes your problem public. Multiple times I couldn't get reach to customer service or I would be lost in a Labyrinth of various agents who would simply transfer me over and over.
> 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 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.
Yea, I was in San Diego airport checking into my flight to London with BA and someone at BA had messed up bad (I'd missed a connection inbound due to their fault).
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.
On the other hand, isn't customer service the one big opportunity remaining to Twitter? They could bring back the text message system for paying businesses. Revamp Tweetdeck into a tool more focused on reputation management etc. They don't need to chase the celebs and fandoms away but they are gradually leaving anyway. Journos will likely stay, the ticks make them feel big.
I recently told a SaaS startup that their password change page was down -- this was communicated via Twitter with an exact error code and everything. After a few hours, they resolved the problem without needing any further details from me. Obviously YMMV, but some issues are appropriate to call out over Twitter.
In my experience it's the absolute best way to get shitty companies to offer passable customer service. They seemingly put better people on the social team than the general call center. Usually it's a single tweet and then a reply asking to hop into DM.
Tweets are great, because they're public and therefore often actually get a response (I guess because companies don't want to be seen as ignoring support messages?). When I email a company, especially if it's a large company, more often than not my message seems to get ignored.
The article is slightly too optimistic, bordering on naive.
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.
Which is why they want to use texting in my opinion. Social media is public, and when an angry customer uses it as a platform to complain, you have to handle the situation post-haste. The longer a mention goes publicly ignored, the worse it is.
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.
I fly weekly. After every flight and almost every phone call I get an email requesting I take a survey. Knowing how metrics driven most big companies are (I'm a consultant) I have to assume that for all the complaining nobody is filling out these surveys. When I fill them out things happen. Every time I give a negative review I find myself higher in the upgrade list or upgraded outright. It's actually a "hack" another frequent traveler taught me. Give negative reviews, get more upgrades.
If you fly "weekly", then as long as it's a round trip of at least one segment each direction, you're going to hit 100+ segments/year. And as long as you spend enough on tickets to hit threshold, that's in at least the platinum tier of all three major US airlines, and knocking on the door of their top tier. You shouldn't be surprised that you're getting upgraded.
I get that it's a catchy title and all, but give the airlines a chance here. This seems like a genuine attempt to provide better customer service and we should applaud companies for actually bothering to try.
I'm all for better customer service, especially as a customer.
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.
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 it, but a bit of insult to injury.
DHH posted about his bad airline experience[1] in 2013. An app for addressing both your experience and his experience is feasible for the HN crowd. Please steal this business plan[2]. tl;dr Today, getting issues resolved places the burden of effort is the wronged. This can be shifted. "Reversing" things does wonders.
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.
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 distractions and I can also use filters to ignore certain routine emails, but companies text messaging me feels like an intrusion into my privacy.
1) I'm pretty baffled by "text message should be used only for time-sensitive communication." There's absolutely no "correct" way to use text messaging, I don't use them for time sensitive communication, I treat text messages the opposite way, I'll get to my text messages when I get to them. If you want my attention now, call. I am not alone in this considering half the time I send a text in the morning I don't get a response until the afternoon. I actually anticipate this since I [naïvely?] assume people are actually working while at work. For me, I'll check my notifications at work when I get up to go to the bathroom or get coffee.
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.
I'm likely younger than you, but I use text messages exactly opposite of you. If something is time sensitive, call me. If I can glance at it, or just outright ignore it for ~8 hours or more, text works perfectly.
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.
You can probably set your notification preferences somewhere on your carrier's website. Unless you do that, they probably have no idea if you even have an email address.
> 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.
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.
At a guess, that's what airline decision-makers are probably thinking, too.
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.
This is Marketing brilliance. Get your irate customers to talk to you through text and you're much less likely to have to resolve something displayed for public on the internet via a review.
Not saying both won't happen, but you give yourself the option to fix the issue before it's really "a problem".
I had a great experience with SMS as customer service. I bought some pens from OfficeDepot and they didn't ship. Texted their support SMS number with my problem and upon request of my order number, I just took a picture of the order email receipt on my computer monitor. I half-expected MMS not to work with their service, but it was fine. They found the problem in a few minutes and I got a shipping confirmation.
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.
Slightly off topic. As someone who values privacy a lot and doesn't give out phone numbers much at all, I prefer other ways to communicate with service providers where the user identifier is easier to switch/change (changing one's phone number is a lot more tedious than changing email addresses because many people, at least from the last two decades, have the habit of using multiple email addresses segregated by usage but have just one phone number).
Years ago I started crating email aliases on my mail server for various things.
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 "[email protected]" 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...
Sounds interesting, we might look into this (I'm building a messaging platform for my employer, and I have my own videochat attempt - this complements both).
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).
[+] [-] jorts|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathancahill|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] guiomie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kqr|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jnsaff2|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] patrickyan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boyce|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdavis703|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonknee|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkersten|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbrookes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mv4|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] probably_wrong|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] noxToken|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ryanmarsh|8 years ago|reply
Forgive typos I typed this on an iPhone
[+] [-] ubernostrum|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maehwasu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxxxxx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spivak|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxsynonym|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] CaptSpify|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keebEz|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] composer|8 years ago|reply
[1] http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/american-airlines-ea... [2] https://gist.github.com/iL3D/59df64947d42828d848ebfc1651a312...
[+] [-] dawnerd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Old_Thrashbarg|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Sleeep|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] soared|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] wyager|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twothamendment|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] composer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waqf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joosters|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jal|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] EADGBE|8 years ago|reply
Not saying both won't happen, but you give yourself the option to fix the issue before it's really "a problem".
[+] [-] wyc|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] newscracker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|8 years ago|reply
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 "[email protected]" 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...
[+] [-] Sleeep|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freyfogle|8 years ago|reply
They recently completed YC Start-up School.
Full disclosure, I am a very minor investor in the business.
[+] [-] GFischer|8 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] frrad|8 years ago|reply
Basically, a fund you can donate to that then looks for lawsuits against the airlines to underwrite Peter Thiel/Gawker/Hulk Hogan style.
[+] [-] quicon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subway|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] covati|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stasel|8 years ago|reply