Digital Service Design

When I booked a flight via Twitter

by Philipp Brunner

08.02.2016

I made a mistake: I booked a flight prematurely. For 2 people. Half a year in advance. I underestimated how much our daughter would still be dependent on our presence every evening six months later. In short: I had to add a ticket to my booking at a later date. Easier said than done.

Helpdesk? No connection under this number

As a digital native and web-savvy person, the airline’s website airfrance.com was my first port of call. I have no problem with digital self-service processes; on the contrary, I like to take care of my own affairs and tasks.

However, booking an additional “half flight ticket” for a one-and-a-half-year-old makes things complicated. It would have been easy to buy an additional ticket to my booking online. However, there is no option to add a free ticket (without a seat, so only airport taxes and handling fee are payable) in the self-service area of the website.

Next thought: Pick up the phone the old-fashioned way and speak to someone at the helpdesk. I avoid it if I can help it. In this case, I saw no other option.

I tried to get through to the Airfrance helpdesk about four times. I tried it at different times of the day. I stayed on the line for 20 minutes. Without success. When I finally got someone on the phone, the call was cut off after four minutes. High potential for frustration, especially as a call to the call center is very time-consuming and bogs me down due to the long waiting times described above.

Finally, another flash of inspiration: Twitter! I visited the Air France profile and wrote a tweet with my request. I received the answer within a few minutes:

@augmatic Hallo Philipp, bitte senden Sie uns Ihre Buchungsreferenz, damit wir uns das ansehen und Sie beraten können. Thanks!
— Air France (@airfrance) May 8, 2015

It’s Magic – one tweet gets the ball rolling

With that one tweet, I basically did all the work necessary to make the additional booking. As requested, I used a direct message (not publicly visible) to send my booking reference to Air France.

I was informed about all further steps on this very channel, about 3 hours after my initial tweet I had the additional ticket.
And all this while I was spending the evening with friends in a café. Without having to register anywhere or provide my payment details. They were already stored in the system from my initial booking.

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At the end of the short process, which was handled via direct messages, the airline confirmed the booking of the ticket via Twitter and e-mail.

@airfrance Vielen Dank! Very much appreciated!
— PB (@augmatic) May 8, 2015

This experience made a lasting impression on me: a fine example of how service design and customer contact can work today. Low-threshold, personal, direct, super convenient. As a customer, I was not aware of the complexity of the process in the background.

It’s not called “earned media” for no reason

Simplicity & directness are definitely trends in service design: as simple as possible, via any channel that customers prefer.
Customer-centricity also means leaving the choice of means and media of communication to the customers and not restricting it to specific corporate channels.
Therefore, companies whose customer-centricity is more than just lip service must occupy and manage in real-time all those channels that are relevant to their customers: increasingly including messenger services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Signal. Even the good old SMS – essentially the mother of current messenger services – is far from obsolete. Common to these services is the simple, low-threshold form of contact as well as the direct, convenient communication with the company.

Behind the scenes, highly complex processes and the centralization of customer data are necessary to provide a seamless experience. Customers: are having no interest for these processes. For them, the result matters, along with a as pleasant and smooth a path as possible to get there. For this, there’s ultimately praise, free word-of-mouth marketing, and customer loyalty:

Outstanding #service experience provided by @airfrance 's twitter team. No need to call helpdesk, all solved via Twitter. #CX #UX #AirFrance
— PB (@augmatic) May 8, 2015

But the path to get there must be earned.

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