A company’s ability to respond to complaints on Twitter will soon be the benchmark of customer relations
Boarding a plane to discover that the seat you had booked next to an emergency exit doesn’t provide the extra leg room you had expected, and that your partner’s seat has mysteriously been moved 10 rows away from yours, is enough to raise anybody’s hackles. But if, like me, you understand that there is no point in creating a scene because it’s not the cabin crew’s fault, then expressing your frustration on Twitter seems a reasonable option.
For some Twitter users, apparently, these are “first world problems”. Not wrong there: I live in the first world, and my problems are, fortunately, not about subsistence … but what happened to me was annoying, and I don’t see why I should let it pass without doing anything. Other Twitter users believe that expressing your frustration in public is somehow “impolite” or “wrong”, and that complaints should be made in private. I wholeheartedly disagree. I’m not “asking for a favor” or “a privilege” in private, I just want the service I paid for and corresponding to the specifications of my reservation.
Furthermore I complain publicly because I believe that doing so provides an opportunity for the company to show that it is able to rectify the problem. In this case, moreover, the company responded to my tweet within minutes, apologizing and asking for my details so as to refund the extra amount paid for an emergency exit seat. In this case, unnecessary: I hadn’t paid for the ticket, and the crew had managed to solve the problem.
Over the years Twitter has established itself as an effective way of getting feedback from companies. Complaining when something doesn’t work is normal: the first thing I do when I finish a class or conference is to look at Twitter to see if anybody was bothered by something that I said, if they liked or didn’t like, or if they found it interesting: those are the rules of the game. If I received complaints on a regular basis, I guess I would stop being invited to conferences: Before Twitter existed, that feedback could take a long to arrive or perhaps I would never learn about it. Now, it occurs instantly.
I use Twitter to highlight things that have surprised me pleasantly, as well as to express my frustration when something goes wrong or does not meet my expectations. I have been doing this for many years: as said, those are the new rules of the game, as long as the language used is appropriate. Similarly, I keep my complaints to a minimum, so as not to appear overly negative and prompt people to unfollow me.
My approach is increasingly widespread, and puts companies under a lot of pressure: they must now treat every customer as unique, respond quickly to their complaints, and try, as far as possible, to provide solutions to their problems, which on many occasions can be very difficult. Can an airline prevent such problems from occurring? Probably not. Shit happens. Complaining on Twitter is an opportunity for a company to show that it knows how to respond, or at least apologize properly, when these kinds of problems occur.
Dealing with complaints on the social networks quickly has quickly become the standard by which businesses are measured: airlines, hotels, delivery companies, or shops now have to invest in the technology and resources to allow them to respond to complaints quickly and efficiently. I believe that this will soon become the benchmark of quality, in the same way Facebook ranks websites. For the younger generation, brought up in a world where the social networks are omnipresent, companies that do not respond in this way simply do not exist and deserve no consideration. And honestly, I think that’s the way it should be.
(En español, aquí)
