I recently purchased a ticket to fly from Boston to Denver over Columbus Day weekend. A few weeks passed and, when a local conflict required me to change my dates of travel, I logged onto the JetBlue website and clicked the link to “change entire itinerary.” I gladly paid the $100 surcharge to reschedule my flight.
Less than 24 hours later, I realized I needed to change it again. I didn’t want to spend another $100 and I tweeted @JetBlue to inquire if the rumor was correct that I could amend my flight information without paying a fee.
@jetblue Your website indicates 24-hr period to cancel reservation without a cancel fee if travel for 7+ days away. Can I do it online?
— Ari Herzog (@ariherzog) September 19, 2012
They were quick to respond and we tweeted for a few minutes.
JetBlue’s Twitter team suggested I call their toll-free phone number and explain my situation.
I called.
Katie wanted to help me, and even put me on hold to check with her supervisor, but because of my circumstance she could not.
I went back to @JetBlue and asked for a second opinion.
We tweeted back and forth some more — here is a link to those tweets — and we moved to private messaging so I could share my confirmation number in confidence without the world seeing it.
I also elaborated the entire episode on JetBlue’s Facebook page (and you do not need a FB account to view that here) and referred to that link in my tweets.
JetBlue investigated my situation and, unlike their telephone colleagues, offered me a customer courtesy, waived the $100 fee, canceled my itinerary, and opened up a block of credits.
I promptly confirmed new flight details with my cousins in Denver and booked a new flight with the credited money.
@JetBlue didn’t have to help me. But they did. They listened to my tweets, engaged me publicly and privately, and proved once again why they are such an excellent company with amazing customer service.
When I teach digital marketing classes, my students routinely ask me why they should tweet and how businesses should use the channel for customer service. I usually tell them the case study of Comcast on Twitter. I can now talk about JetBlue, too.
About Ari Herzog
My son is a social media expert for a major company and uses Twitter to get what he wants. The big companies have people watch and responding to tweets. He has got all kinds of freebies and upgrades.
This is a great example of why companies need to be available to their customers through all possible avenues. JetBlue keeps demonstrating its commitment to keeping people happy and coming back for more. What a cool modern take on good old fashioned customer service.
Wow, I would never have thought to use twitter this way. I am somewhat a twitter noob. Facebook and I go way back as well as most computing venues but this really makes me think about possibilities and applications of our twitter account.
Hi Ari,
Just comes to show the value that listening and responding online can bring to a business – Especially on twitter. As pushing tweets is not marketing, but responding and building relationships one can tribute a lot of positive exposure and build a presence online in various social media channels.
I think because a lot of social media is visible/public, companies are often quicker to respond, otherwise they will get a lot of bad publicity. Glad to see you got a good response from JetBlue
And yet, it’s intriguing when companies do not respond online. Or, when they question why.
Thanks for sharing your story, Ari. Personally, I have been a fan of JetBlue for several years now, based on their superior customer service. Dealing with airlines can be very frustrating (and expensive), yet that the JetBlue goes above and beyond will give them a long-term advantage in the cut-throat, uber competitive air travel industry.
Southwest is also very cool on Twitter.
I find it fairly amazing but quite a few (especially I have noticed travel – airlines and hotels) businesses respond better on Twitter than anywhere else (phone, email, web comment form, failure to have a direct IM chat available on web site, even in person…). I must say I find it an odd choice, but I totally agree a company that cares about customer service is wise to pay attention to Twitter. They would be wise to do so in all the other ways too.
I imagine RedBull spends millions on online efforts. I wanted to know where to buy Sugar Free in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. They didn’t even respond. It isn’t so amazing they are more concerned with style than substance – that is what you could guess. But it is sad when you spend millions on image and can’t even respond to someone that wants to buy your product.
In the USA, I will fly Jet Blue or Southwest if at all possible, because of their culture to actually treat customers as customers not idiots to be fleeced.
I am frankly very surprised that they responded as such.