Bo Jacobson's Posterous

I've been pretty vocal about my displeasure with Virgin America over the past two weeks. It's been painful. For those of you who don't know, they recently implemented a new reservation and check-in system and it hasn't been a smooth transition. I actually like Virgin America. I like their brand, their nonstop flights, their entertainment setup, their staff - really I like everything about Virgin America except the current out-of-home campaign. (It's bad)

So how about I shift gears and try giving some helpful customer service advice? I think that would be the karma correct thing to do since I'm actually not a fan of complaining. 

Core point: Directing users to Twitter for customer service is unwise.

During the recent issues they experienced big problems with their online services, and their kiosks, and everybody defaulted to their call lines which got super jammed up. (I waited on hold a total of 4 hours in the last two weeks) What did Virgin do? They recorded an automated message that said they weren't answering calls at the call center due to volume but you should follow them on Twitter and DM for help. 

1. That's not how Twitter works. Following somebody doesn't let you DM them. I knew this so I found it just a little annoying that they got it wrong. For somebody who doesn't use Twitter that much, or doesn't understand how this works, it could create a service dead-end

2. Because you can't just follow Virgin and fire off a DM, you have to get their attention. The only avenue for this is a public mention. So lots and lots of people had private problems and Virgin funelled all of it to a public outlet. It's like they wouldn't help you unless you told all your followers you were having a problem with them. I understand the benefits of Twitter customer service very well. I've studied it, I've taught it, I've been serviced by it. The basic idea is that sometimes individual consumer frustration will bubble up and your brand can benefit by turning that negative into a positive. But that doesn't mean you should direct users to publicly voice their discontent and then clean up after them. Handle customer service issues quickly and quietly, while keeping an eye out for people who go to public channels instead of your discreet, effective perscribed method of problem solving. It makes them look silly for whining, rather than making you look like your service is on fire. 

So many parts of the outage could have been handled better, but I'm sure that some of it was beyond their control. (technology fails - it sucks) What they can do, right now, is re-order their customer service process so that only edge-case users will shout at the heavens instead of that being the preferred method of logging a service ticket. (also - call people back when you say you will)