The Right Person, Everytime
From the Desk of Elaine Ellis…
Getting customer service is so hard at this point that there is an entire site dedicated to Get Human, helping you find a real human to help (supposedly). Average wait for AT&T? 18 minutes. Have fun with that.
It’s why I love social media, specifically Twitter. It changes the game. This past week, I booked a flight on Travelocity for my upcoming sojourn to Europe. A one-way flight from Denver to Boston to Reykjavik to Oslo. Or so I thought, until I got a call from Steve in India who informed me that my flight wasn’t actually confirmed. I could either do Denver to SEATTLE to Reykjavik to Oslo or I could cancel my flight. Denied, Travelocity.
So I took it to the streets.
As a company, they now have a potentially crazy, angry customer on their hands. What to do? What to do? Oh, respond!
Well played Travelocity and Joel Frey! Joel was extremely helpful and promised to put a senior agent on my case, and that’s exactly what he did. The senior agent called that afternoon, offered me the Seattle leg again and explained that it was actually less total travel time than Boston. For long, extraneous reasons, I’m not going to book through Travelocity, but I found their customer service to be top notch.
It’s why social media is a game changer. And not just in the sense of needing superlatives for your client’s boring new product announcement. When your customer is talking about you to all of their friends on Twitter (which sometimes equals thousands and thousands), you best not have your head in the sand.
To top it off, Travelocity had this nice touch. Right back at ya, Travelocity.
Elaine! Great story. Glad Travelocity got back to you via Twitter. I think on the other side of this story is how we Twitter folk are getting really used to the customer service via Twitter. And that sometimes we expect a response from a company and don’t get it, and then we get really upset.
Case in point, last week I was having trouble ordering a bridesmaid’s dress on Davidsbridal.com. The only phone number I could find was automated and I couldn’t get through to where I needed to. I reached out to Twitter asking if there was anyone from the site on Twitter–no response. Then, I found their Facebook page. I left a question on it asking someone to respond back to me. That day passed and I got upset that I hadn’t heard back in resposne to my question. Three days later, someone did finally respond to my Facebook message. It took 3 days, but they *did* respond. Too bad I already sorted everything out on my own.
Social media is really a game-changer for companies who require customer service. They can either really succeed in this area (if they see the value in it), or they can #fail.
Longest comment in history? Maybe.
Ginger, you raise a really good point! The heightened expectations we have about getting the help we need from social media changes is hard for us when companies fail. What I also think is the interesting is the question of who should own Twitter outreach – Customer Service or PR? Because if PR owns it, I bet they’re less responsive than they should be.
And I love your LONG, thoughtful comments.