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.").
This could also work for texts, if they were answered in a reasonable amount of time. As you say, being stuck on a voice-only communications channel that demands 100% of your attention is really expensive, and it's bad for accurately conveying information.
The important thing for getting bureaucracies to do what you want is to make it expensive for the bureaucrat to not deal deal with your problem. That's a distinct advantage to calling in - you're using one of their employees time, and you will continue to do so until you're satisfied. The line agent wants to handle you ASAP for their statistics, and if you get escalated then even better.
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.
>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 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.
Also, the social media person is incentivised to create good PR (or avoid bad PR), not to follow a set of prescriptive rules about how customer service enquiries are handled and escalate to a more senior decision maker only when strictly necessary
(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)
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.
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.
Same experience. Using official channels, my request go unanswered. Twitter, the best customer service! Once CEO of a major retail company followed up with me to make sure my issue was handled properly.
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.
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.
Yea, if the company has a terrible support process outside of tweeting, it becomes the nuclear option to get someone to actually deal with you, which is just terrible for everyone.
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.
> 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.
I mean sure, the company could add a second tweet at the end of the interaction:
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.
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.
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.
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 never noticed it in years of getting surveys, as an AA EXP and Delta PM. Always depended on the same old known factors: elite load on the route, time of booking/time of request (depending on airline), etc.
Only thing I ever could tie to surveys/feedback was AA comping me 5k RDM after one particularly horrid flight.
I got merged into AA from the old US Airways program (was US Chairman's Preferred, became AA EXP). Ditched them after about a year and a half of suffering, and did a three-month match to Delta Platinum.
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.
Well, maybe. Even if your general experience was positive, if you give honest negative feedback about certain aspects of their service then that could be useful information to the airline.
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.
Does it matter? Having another option is good. It's not like having this service somehow blocks you from complaining on Twitter.
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.
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."
The social media likely has nothing to do with it - it's likely more about reducing/shifting call center costs. If an issue would require multiple calls, it can get much more expensive than handling by text. Some issues are also much easier to handle async.
IMO there are customer service cases that could benefit from a tighter communication loop.
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?
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.
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.
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 "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...
I do the same thing - I make an email alias for nearly every organization that I do business with. It was surprisingly easy to set up with GSuite.
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.)
A lot of other similar state agencies have different names, DOT is popular, I've also seen MVD. DMV procedures are a great illustrator of bubbles; a lot of things vary wildly (for example, what happens to sequential plates when a vehicle is sold), but most people don't realize there could even be a different procedure, or if they do, they think most states do it the same way they do.
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).
