Monday, February 18, 2013

DAY NICE: the web team comes AAround

Great surprise this morning: a tweet from @AmericanAir.

Just a flashback from previous episodes: I've booked some tickets for a family holiday around Xmas but they were not ticketed, despite me calling back to check. Since, it appears clearly to me that the reservations department failed to resubmit the transaction as confirmed by BarclayCard and to contact me about it. Obviously, by then the fares had doubled, which meant explaining the kids we were no longer going to see the Grand Canyon.

I've made a bit of a stink about it, on Twittter, Facebook and directly before that with the Customer Relations department.

Following all that, the web team who operates Twitter and Facebook contacted reservations and confirmed that they had never emailed me after all. They then tweeted me yesterday and proposed to reinstate the booking.

IT WORKED!

In about 30 mn after I cam back to them via DM, they had ticketed our booking! WOW.

So what now? We're relived after a few really stressful days. But then, we're looking forward to our holidays. Thank you to the American Airlines web team.

Based on this personal story, here are my thoughts on the customer experience aspects:
  • First, I have to praise @barclaycard who was incredibly responsive. They called me up to do the fraud check the next day, which is annoying but I suppose fine. Then I got them on the phone and that was not very conclusive but then they came back quickly by email. When I tweeted though, they were right away on the case.
  •  Secondly, after some denying and passing on the parcel, the @AmericanAir crew really helped. I'm not sure what went on between them and the reservations department, but I guess they put some pressure. So, thank you web team. I've checked the volumme of comments on Facebook and Twitter, and it's quite impressive. Clearly they're busy!
  • The AA reservation department though is a bit of a mess. There's probably quite a lot of manual processes. They're hard to reach and agents don't seem to have authority to do much, not even escalate a complaint.
  • For customers then, social media (SocMed) is a great new avenue to engage with brands, directly and using channel of choices -it's much easier to tweet or Facebook than waiting 20 mn for an agent.
  • For brands, it can be a way to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty with quicker issue resolution. And also an easier way to trip in public if responses fall short of the mark.


Previous post in this series:
  • American Airlines -DAY FOUR, now own up!
  • American Airlines, give me my booking back!
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