6 Customer Benefits of Internal Social Networks – Disarming Road Warriors

“Road warriors” usually earn that name the hard way. 

I recently had a two-leg trip, flying first to Cleveland and then to New York.   I arrived 90 minutes before my flight, to see the big red Cancelled on the board.  It was the airlines last flight to Cleveland that day.  The airline wanted me to wait until the next day to fly, but I would miss my meeting.  So I bought another ticket on a different airline and requested a refund from the original carrier; and then the fun began.

My original ticket had been purchased through a “partner” airline.  The agent at Airline One, who really was trying to help, had to call the internal Help Desk to determine how to handle my one-leg refund.  The internal Help Desk was flooded with calls – all for the same issue.  Passenger anger visibly rose as the agents hung on hold, and the passengers could hear each in turn asking the SAME questions.   

I finally received an “authorization” for a refund, but the agent claimed the partner airline had to process it.  Partner Airline sent me back to Airline One.  And then back to Partner Airline.  I was getting lots of exercise, but not much satisfaction.

Then an agent at Partner Airline said he couldn’t process the refund, but ANOTHER agent there could.  I waited for him.  Good thing I had a long wait for my flight.  The agent again really was trying to be helpful, but he didn’t know how to handle the situation either.  Twice he disappeared for long periods behind a closed door to: Ask someone else? Look it up?  Call the Help Desk?

Same problem as Airline One.  Too much time holding for the Help Desk.  Agents were calling for each passenger (and the line was growing!).  I finally got my refund, and heard the agent tell the next person that they couldn’t process the requests; she had to wait and go on-line to request the refund.  They also called Airline One and told them to stop sending passengers over; Airline One could handle it themselves. 

The agents were angry with their “partner” agents; they were tired of being yelled at by weary passengers; they couldn’t get sufficiently rapid response from their own company.  They punted.  The warriors hit the war path verbally and on-line.

Wow.  The number of loud, angry passengers was impressive.  People were still angry when the flight I had snagged finally departed 5 hours later.

A fairly simple internal social networking platform linking the agents with the Help Desk staff would have done wonders.  The benefits:

§        A one-to-many communication model   

§        Quicker access to information 

§        Faster responses to not-really-one-of-a-kind problems  (maybe someone else had already encountered the problem!) 

§        Happier passengers who screamed less

§        Agents who were less frustrated   

§        Reduction in bad WOM 

Internal touchpoints cross over to affect customers.  When employees work smoothly together, customers benefit.

The next leg of my trip…my flight was Cancelled….