We all remember the tragic events that took place at the Brussels Airport on March 22nd, 2016. I had a flight scheduled for March 26th with departure from the same airport. It was a flight with a connection before my final destination. One day after the attacks, I had no idea if the airport would be operational in the next days. But I knew that the flights were not officially cancelled. When thinking about what happened in such a familiar place to me and so recently, there was no way that I would want to go there if not absolutely necessary. In my case, it wasn't because I could drive to where I had a connecting flight and skip the first leg of my trip. Consequently I would avoid the Brussels airport, assuming it would be even operating. Now, of course we can't just do that without contacting the airline because the system will automatically cancel your whole ticket if you don't check in to take the first flight.
Before going any further I have a confession to make. Even though I love technology, I do not put myself under the "innovators" area of the classic technology adoption curve. For most situations, I am probably under the later part of the "Early Adopters". And even though I fully adopted Social Media in my personal and even professional life, the idea of making contact with customer services to discuss a complex ticket change seemed not feasible.
As a consequence, my first natural reaction to solve my KLM flight dilemma was to use the good old phone to call customer services. Well, that didn't go as I planned, given the critically of the situation and the high level of emotions, I had no doubt in my mind that KLM would change my ticket immediately and without any costs. To my surprise, the polite and nice lady on the other side of the line, cordially told me that she was not authorize to do that without charging me a huge re-booking fee. At that point I asked if there was any superior person that I could talk to because I couldn't believe in what I was hearing. But no, she said to call "tomorrow".
That's when I noticed that all over the e-mails and their website, KLM was advertising that we should "contact them via the new channels: Your questions answered 24/7 within 1 hour via Facebook and Twitter". Immediately after hanging up the old and archaic desk phone, I tried Facebook and the response and efficiency astonished me! Within 1 hr, they found my reservation based on my Facebook name and informed me that they could make the change with no problem. We started to chat with private messages and the problem was solved within hours and just a bit of typing.
My experience highlight many of the basic foundations that a company need to put in place when they open their social media channels as a customer service tool. Time is of essence and to get there you need the tools, capable personal and monitoring to track messages and timely answer them with a personal touch and in a meaningful way. An automatic message like "thanks for your question" would have been devastating for the brand.
But most importantly, when a customer is dissatisfied with your brand, everything depends on your response. When I went to Facebook to complain about the phone service, I was directly sending a negative feedback to KLM. While for some this is a threat, for smart companies is an open invitation to rectify your brand's image and, more important, your relationship with the customer. I felt like I was heard and my problem was taken seriously. KLM did what it had to do to keep me a happy customer, despite the difficult circumstances.
Before going any further I have a confession to make. Even though I love technology, I do not put myself under the "innovators" area of the classic technology adoption curve. For most situations, I am probably under the later part of the "Early Adopters". And even though I fully adopted Social Media in my personal and even professional life, the idea of making contact with customer services to discuss a complex ticket change seemed not feasible.
As a consequence, my first natural reaction to solve my KLM flight dilemma was to use the good old phone to call customer services. Well, that didn't go as I planned, given the critically of the situation and the high level of emotions, I had no doubt in my mind that KLM would change my ticket immediately and without any costs. To my surprise, the polite and nice lady on the other side of the line, cordially told me that she was not authorize to do that without charging me a huge re-booking fee. At that point I asked if there was any superior person that I could talk to because I couldn't believe in what I was hearing. But no, she said to call "tomorrow".
That's when I noticed that all over the e-mails and their website, KLM was advertising that we should "contact them via the new channels: Your questions answered 24/7 within 1 hour via Facebook and Twitter". Immediately after hanging up the old and archaic desk phone, I tried Facebook and the response and efficiency astonished me! Within 1 hr, they found my reservation based on my Facebook name and informed me that they could make the change with no problem. We started to chat with private messages and the problem was solved within hours and just a bit of typing.
My experience highlight many of the basic foundations that a company need to put in place when they open their social media channels as a customer service tool. Time is of essence and to get there you need the tools, capable personal and monitoring to track messages and timely answer them with a personal touch and in a meaningful way. An automatic message like "thanks for your question" would have been devastating for the brand.
But most importantly, when a customer is dissatisfied with your brand, everything depends on your response. When I went to Facebook to complain about the phone service, I was directly sending a negative feedback to KLM. While for some this is a threat, for smart companies is an open invitation to rectify your brand's image and, more important, your relationship with the customer. I felt like I was heard and my problem was taken seriously. KLM did what it had to do to keep me a happy customer, despite the difficult circumstances.
