Bye bye call centre, hello Twitter
March 18th, 2010 by mark
Twitter continues to amaze me with its ability to act as an effective customer service tool. As far as I’m concerned, I’m never picking up the phone again to deal with a customer service dispute. It’s just not as effective. Let me tell you a story about how WestJet used Twitter to completely turn around a negative experience.
I was booked on a flight with WestJet from Toronto to Atlantic City and found out 10 days before the flight was to leave that it had it been cancelled. Long story short, I was stuck and needed to re-book alternate transportation with a higher priced, last minute ticket on another airline. My out-of-pocket expenses were $1000. Was I mad? Yes, seething mad.
What made me really mad was not just the extra expense, but rather the weak response I received from WestJet’s main customer service line. When speaking to the rep, she was not even sympathetic to the inconvenience. “We reserve the right to cancel flights and while we regret this inconvenience, blah blah blah.”
At this point, I was not prepared to invest any more emotional energy. So I turned to Twitter.
Within a few hours, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from “Greg” via Direct Message asking me to email him the details at twitter@westjet.com. It felt good that my comment had registered and someone was listening.
Within 1-2 days, I received a telephone call from a senior member of WestJet’s customer service team, Seth Lennea. Seth was pleasant, professional and seemed genuinely committed to solving my problem. After providing him the details of the expenses incurred, he came back to me within 24 hrs, offering to reimburse my extra costs in the form of a WestJet voucher (something I will use as I travel often). While I wish this whole thing had never happened in the first place, in a strange way, I feel even more loyal to WestJet than I did before the flight was cancelled.
Bottom line – kudos to WestJet for turning a bad experience into a positive one worth talking about.
What did I learn from this experience?
1. Smart companies are embracing Twitter to address customer service problems quickly.
2. Smart companies who employ tactic #1 are reaping huge benefits as the exchange is done in public (while a phone conversation with a call centre rep is done in private).
3. As its popularity grows, Twitter may soon become as inefficient as the call centre when it comes to resolving customer service problems, but for now, this is uncharted territory.
4. I think the smartest companies will be consistent in their approach to customer service, regardless of how the customer engages them (mail, fax, email, call centre, blogs, in person twitter, smoke signal, etc). In my example, this is an opportunity for improvement at WestJet.
5. Smart companies recognize that resolving customer service problems represent a spectacular marketing opportunity. Making something right is best way to keep a customer for life. It’s hard to put a price tag on that.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
[...] an example. You. Go here and read this anecdote about Westjet. Yes, it’ll open a new window so you won’t lose your place. Go on. [...]
March 18th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Mark,
I recently attended a conference on Word of Mouth Marketing (held by gaspedal.com) and one of the main theme’s was that Customer Service IS marketing now. It used to be customer avoidance (i.e. something goes wrong, you hear about it, try to make the customer less mad, and hope it goes away quietly).
Now the smart companies are embracing customer service in the public forum and reaping the rewards of loyalty due to positive action. Your story is a prime example.
Good to hear as I am embarking on an internal campaign at Vision 2000 to embrace this approach!
March 18th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Robert
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my post. You raise some excellent points and I will not disagree with you when you say that social media is hugely misunderstood as a business tool. However, I think we come from this from 2 different sides of the coin. Allow me to respectfully respond to your post (http://tinyurl.com/yljt6la).
My experiences stem from the fact that I am an entrepreneur in the online promotional products business. I have several staff, thousands of customers and plenty of overhead to keep me up at night, so I am very conscious of where I allocate funds. I do not claim to be a “social media consultant/expert” in any way, shape or form. Everything I wrote about in this post came from my experiences as someone who runs a business and has learned to navigate my way around social media from a practical perspective.
Here are some stories I can share with you about how social media has been used as a customer service tool in my business.
1. We have dealt with flare ups on Twitter before, specifically as it related to a product we supplied to a tech conference a year ago. The product (a magnet desk toy) was not well received because of the attendees’ concern about the effect on hard drives and cell phones. It was our oversight and we were to blame 100% (in many ways, just like WestJet). I had 2 choices: hide or jump in. I chose the latter and identified the critics and tweeted an apology for the oversight and directed people towards an area at registration where we would take back any magnets. I then shot a video of the magnets next to a blackberry and showed they presented no harm while it was turned off and on. By jumping in quickly and demonstrating that we really cared allowed people to see that they were dealing with human beings, vs faceless companies that read lame customer service scripts. Our efforts were rewarded by several supportive tweets, including a few from the original critics. The conversation turned from hostile to neutral to positive (within about 4 hrs).
Twitter is a unique medium. I agree that it is terribly inefficient at times (an unfiltered tweet stream is one such example), however it is a public forum and while the initial complainers get air time, there is no question that the company response gets air time as well. In our case, our apology and YouTube video was retweeted many more times that the original complaining tweets. In the case of WestJet, the fact that you and I have posted and tweeted this to several thousand people is not bad advertising for $1000.
Like I said in the WestJet example, I wish we never went through this magnet experience, but the silver lining was that many people saw how we reacted and that earned us trust. I am sure we lost some potential customers, but there was a net gain in the end. Had we done nothing, our brand would have suffered.
You raise a good point about the potential for these additional channels to reduce the effectiveness of customer service across the board. However, my experience in my business suggests just the opposite. 5 years ago, 75% of our customer service issues were addressed over the phone, while 25% were handled over email. Resources were allocated accordingly. Today, 30% of customer service issues are handled over the phone, 50% over email and 20% via social media channels. The pie has not grown, it has just been carved up differently. How does this translate into staff time and company resources? My team simply spends less time on the phone and more time on email and social media. We have moved to where our customers have gone. As I said in one of my “lessons learned”, we offer the same level of quality customer service no matter how we are contacted. The fact that we are spending more time on Twitter than we did 2 years ago does not change a thing. It’s just where some of our customers have migrated.
Finally, social media has been very good for business for us. 20% of all new accounts signed up in the past 12 months came through our online and social media efforts (compared to 3% the year prior). From this pool of new accounts, we have done actual business with 50% of them already. If Twitter blows up tomorrow, we will simply keep our ear to the ground and follow our customers where they move next.
November 22nd, 2010 at 9:05 am
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January 15th, 2011 at 12:39 am
Hi, sorry to respond nearly a year after your post…but, Seth’s my brother and you can check out his current whereabouts at: http://www.theslapdash.com/
I have forwarded a link to your site to him.
Also, I am an accountant, recently with an online presence with a website and facebook page, and have been wondering if I can make twitter work for me – what do you think? I invite you to respond on the “Twitter” topic of the Discussion tab on my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/carlacga