Why Twitter Is The Best Customer Service Channel

I have to admit I was a slow adopter of Twitter. Expressing oneself in 140 characters seemed unnecessarily limiting. When I finally signed up in August 2013 it was used as a single feed for news and travel stories.

Since then travel companies, especially airlines and hotels, have become savvy at using Twitter to directly manage customer feedback and complaints. You can see a typical interaction with Alaska Airlines below:

With call centre hold times of up to an hour, Twitter is also the best customer service channel for simple requests including seat selection on flights, using upgrades at hotels and resolving issues with loyalty programs.

Tip: Follow the brands on Twitter that you travel with so that you’re ready to ask for their help when the time comes via the private Direct Message (DM) function

Seat Selection

In most cases, you can easily select your seat online using the Manage My Booking function on the airlines website.

However, there are situations where seats are blocked and you have to manually request them like in Cathay Pacific’s six seat First Class cabin on their Boeing 777-300ER. Both Seat 2A and 2K are blocked at bassinet seats:

Rather than calling up the Cathay Pacific call centre, I was able to update my seat assignment from 2D (a middle seat) to 2A (a window seat) in a matter of minutes via Twitter:

Hotel Upgrades

Elite members of hotel programs are often given upgrade certificates such as with World of Hyatt for access to Club Lounges. 

These are easily requested via the excellent Hyatt Concierge as per below for an upcoming stay at the Hyatt Centric Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong.

Loyalty Program Requests

Finally, Twitter reps from Hilton Honors have been very helpful in sorting out a Fast Track to Gold that required a 4 night stay.

I had booked the required 4 nights for a 3 night stay at the Millennium Hilton New York One UN Plaza as I was arriving very early in the morning. Despite having reached out to the hotel via email and receiving confirmation that they were aware of my arrival time, I showed up to the hotel and the check in clerk advised my booking had been cancelled.

After I showed them the email correspondence, they managed to find me a room immediately and ended up only charging me for the 3 nights by way of service recovery.

Whilst appreciated, this meant my Fast Track to Gold wasn’t activated. I explained the situation to the Hilton Honors Twitter team and they were able to update my status to Gold immediately, not something I could otherwise have done given I was on my way across the Atlantic to Southampton.