I’ve previously harped on United Airlines for its less-than active, engaging participation on Twitter. But I’ve seen significant improvement lately, particularly since the beginning of the year.

United has stepped up its game in replying, helping and informing those who directly include @united in their tweets. And it’s a welcome sign.

Today, for the first time I’ve seen, United interjected a bit of humor and playfulness in a tweet. It was an ideal response to someone I follow, who if he doesn’t mind, I can call an #avgeek.

Jason Rabinowitz (aka @AirlineFlyer on Twitter) was at the Virgin America event in Newark today celebrating their new service and happened to tweet the following humorous observation, including an image. And United was quick to reply in kind.

While an airline’s target market is the high-yield business traveler, they need to be mindful of all of their customers and followers. And it was a pleasure to see United step back from a rigid corporate persona to engage someone in playful banter today. Well done, United.

Plus, I’ve seen United very quickly help passengers who need immediate assistance with flight protection in the event of a yet-to-be-realized airport “misconnect”, help with searching for fares and flights, and assistance offering post-trip issue resolution.

Mistakes still happen, such as oopsing on airport codes:

But heck, I make mistakes, too. I’m just happy to see United really following through on something they’ve known needed improvement.

My favorite airline in the Twitterverse remains American Airlines as they consistently engage and inform their followers in a fashion as United did today. Social media isn’t going away and Twitter has certainly exploded in both acceptance and participation as a medium to interact with a company’s customers. I’m glad to see United is finally taking it seriously (and humorously).

Related posts:

United Airlines Retweeted WHAT?

Some Airlines Understand the Power of Social Media, Some Don’t

Interview With the Head of American’s Social Media Team

I thought United retweeting an article containing questionable customer service and reference to “losing” an unaccompanied minor was bad. But today British Airways waaaay outdid United in retweeting the following expletive-loaded tweet:

I was visiting my parents today and on my laptop scrolling through Twitter before we headed to a pre-Thanksgiving/Thanksgiving lunch and nearly shouted, “Holy shit!” when I came across that tweet. I ended up going to British Airways’ official account page on Twitter to confirm it really came from them… and it did. Wow. I “favorited” it, took the screenshot and went to lunch.

Now that I’m back at home and catching up, I see British Airways deleted the retweet and sent the following out to its followers:

And Tnooz confirmed with a BA rep via email that an investigation is being launched. Me thinks someone who manages BA’s Twitter account might’ve been a bit tipsy Saturday evening UK time and wasn’t thinking before hitting the retweet button.

Related posts:

United Airlines Retweeted WHAT?!

Some Airlines Understand the Power of Social Media, Some Don’t

Interview With American’s Social Media Director

When it comes to having elite status with a hotel, my two favorite perks are by far free Wi-Fi and access to the club lounge. I also appreciate the other amenities that vary by hotel chain – and even brand within a chain – including room upgrades and welcome gifts (free bottled water, food platters, etc).

But what keeps a brand front-of-mind even more in my book is when I receive an email from the hotel. And I’m not talking about the post-stay surveys (obviously), of which I probably complete 80% of the time. They’re the ones from hotel GMs or other managerial staff either before or after my stay that leave a lasting impact.

I was in suburban Chicago for a wedding the weekend before last and stayed at the DoubleTree Wood Dale, a property I’ve been to several times in the past. (Side note: this is a great hotel for out-of-towners attending the Chicago Seminars if the Holiday Inn and other overflow hotels book up – the rates are usually incredibly cheap and it’s just a short drive away).

The day after I checked out I received an email from the GM thanking me for my business and hoping my stay was “excellent.” He noted a survey would likely follow from Hilton, but he also encouraged feedback sent directly to him. And I did just that. My stay was indeed very good, though I noted a couple of very minor annoyances (a flickering light outside my room creating a strobe effect and a wet lobby floor from remodeling work).

The GM responded to my email within an hour, addressed my concerns and provided updates on the progress of the hotel’s refresh. His reply honestly did more to keep DoubleTree and Hilton front-of-mind than the free bottled water and room upgrade I received.

Similarly, I have a couple of separate hotel stays this weekend (United’s 787 inaugural!!!) and one property already reached out via email offering a specific point of contact for any issues that might come up during my stay.

These are just two examples of the many emails I’ve received since holding elite status with hotel chains. It’s a simple, free and effective marketing tool a hotel can employ to keep my business. I still want my published elite amenities, of course, but the act of personal, direct contact by an actual on-site employee increases the likelihood I’ll be a repeat guest and remain loyal.

[Speaking of outreach and communication, there is an issue with all reader comments being sent to the SPAM folder for BoardingArea blogs, including mine. I'm filtering through the hundreds I receive daily for actual comments and will get them approved and respond in-kind as soon as possible... I'm not ignoring you!]

Related posts:

Another Hilton Social Media Outreach Success Story

Hotel Promotion Failure Resolved via Twitter

Chicago Seminars: Summary

I’m an infographic fan, mostly due to my very visual nature (read: short attention span), and MDG Advertising put one out there recently showing how travelers use social media and their mobile devices.

A couple of things that stand out to me on this one are:

• 18% of people surveyed used mobile device to book a hotel or flight.
• 50% use mobile to check flight status this year vs. 30% in 2011.
• 30% use mobile to check-in for a flight this year vs. 17% in 2011.
• Not surprising, 68% use mobile to keep in touch while on vacation.

Infographic by MDG Advertising

Hat tip: Tnooz

Related posts:

United Airlines Retweeted What?!

Interview With the Head of American’s Social Media Team

Some Airlines Understand the Power of Social Media, Some Don’t

United isn’t known for its social media prowess. Particularly on Twitter where it has a minimal presence compared to other domestic airlines. Yesterday afternoon I saw a rare retweet from them that linked to a third-party article.

Intrigued, I clicked in to read the article. It was written by Peter Shankman, a well-known entrepreneur, author, speaker, etc. He observed an interaction between a distressed passenger and a United agent at LaGuardia recently and wrote about how this agent turned a potentially costly situation for the passenger into a customer service win – at the surface.

The short story is that a passenger turned up at JFK instead of LaGuardia for her flight. The United agent at JFK said there was nothing they could do and that she would have to go to LaGuardia. Knowing she’d miss her original flight, the passenger called United in the cab on the way to LaGuardia to be told it would cost hundreds of dollars in change fees to get on the next flight to her destination – money she didn’t have.

Upon arrival at LaGuardia, she pleaded her case with the United agent, who in turn generated boarding passes (she had a connection in Chicago) to her final (unknown) destination and waived “the fees.” The passenger was ecstatic and this is what Peter observed – a potential costly and disheartening situation for the passenger turned into a customer service success. And the customer was thrilled, going so far as hugging the agent and other random people proclaiming, “United is so wonderful, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Not to take away from how this passenger felt, nor the observations Peter made, but for those of us with a bit deeper knowledge, this was mostly a customer service failure in my book.

There’s a thing called the “flat tire rule,” whereby if you present yourself at the airport within two hours of your originally scheduled flight, United will (at least they did pre-merger) allow you to fly standby without fees on the next flight. Doing a bit more research into who Peter is, I noticed Seth (BoardingArea’s The Wandering Aramean) brought this up in the comments on the original post from him, not the one United retweeted.

It’s great that the United agent at LaGuardia generated confirmed boarding passes for her instead of making her go the standby route. That’s to be applauded. What concerns me about United retweeting this particular article is:

1. The JFK United agent definitely could have mentioned the flat tire rule at the minimum and perhaps even tried to rebook the passenger on one of the West Coast or Dulles-bound flights out of JFK with a connection to her final (unknown) destination. That would have been excellent customer service.
2. The phone agent could have also saved the passenger some worry and advised about the flat tire rule.
3. Peter brings up in his story the situation where United “lost” a 10-year old girl recently traveling unaccompanied. That story has been blasted across the news this week. Was it wise of United to retweet an article mentioning it?

I’m obviously writing this totally separated from what actually happened. There are a lot of unknowns. Did the JFK agent try to rebook her? Were the next flights out of LaGuardia wide open and the agent empowered herself to avoid the standby requirement? How late was the passenger? And so on.

It’s still a heartwarming story for the casual observer and United scored a win with this customer. But I don’t think United – an airline with a damaged image and terrible operational performance lately – should have retweeted an article mentioning that the first agent this passenger encountered said there was nothing they could do, as well as further coverage of the unaccompanied minor situation.

That’s just me.

Related posts:

Some Airlines Understand the Power of Social Media, Some Don’t

Interview With the Head of American’s Social Media Team

Another Hilton Social Media Success Story

I previously posted just how impressed I am with the folks running American Airlines’ Twitter account. They’re active, responsive and professional, yet also know when to throw in some personality and have fun. If you follow @OneMileataTime and @AmericanAir, you’re in for an occasional treat of playful and hilarious banter.

I finally got around to interviewing Jonathan Pierce, American’s director of social media communications, for my Road Warrior blog on CNBC.com and invite you to take a read of the full Q&A session. An excerpt:

Q: Why do you allow your team to have fun and add personality to their replies, particularly on Twitter?
A: Our team is focused on providing exceptional customer service, responding and inspiring customers to fly American with practical travel advice and assistance, all with a human touch. Given the evolution and expectation shift in how our customers are engaging with us, we are moving from communication to conversation. I have a team of fun, fresh, innovative thinkers – their personalities naturally are expressed into our social communities. There’s an understanding of when it’s appropriate to insert personality, compassion and understanding into the conversation.

Learn more about American’s social media strategy, customer insights and plans for the future by reading the full interview here.

I just spent the past 45 minutes catching up on tweets and “chatted” with fellow BoardingArea blogger AAdvantage Geek back-n-forth a couple of times (as well as VeryGoodPoints… hi Stacey!). Anyway, AAdvantage Geek congratulated me on my Executive Platinum status and hoped to see me soon in flight when lo and behold:

Now this wouldn’t have happened, of course, unless American weren’t already following us both. But it did and it reminded me that I need to get back in touch with my contact there at American’s social media team to do an interview I have been planning for my blog on CNBC.com. Why do I want to interview them? Because they understand the power of social media interaction with customers.

How cool is it that a large airline empowers their social media team to have a personality and a bit of fun? It’s soooo refreshing and it certainly left a lasting impression on me. And this isn’t the first time American has done this, either. I’ve had other interactions with them, as well as witnessed hilarious back-n-forth dialogs with OneMileAtATime, among others. All this while providing what I consider to be the best active response to customers in need on Twitter – and at lightning speed no matter the time of day.

As far as airlines that don’t get it? Err… I’m looking at you @united. Besides the admittedly interesting “plane chat” series they conduct once a month, I rarely see an active presence on Twitter from United. They do occasionally reply to customer questions, but not to the level I’ve seen from American and Delta.

At this year’s Frequent Traveler University in April, a representative from United’s Customer Experience group fielded questions from a large group of frequent flyers and United was shocked to find out how many people use Twitter. From Wandering Aramean’s summary:

So, I’m hoping United will take note and if there’s ever a time they could benefit from creating a positive brand awareness in the mind of a customer via social media, it’s now.

Some companies understand the importance of social media outreach from customers, and some don’t (I’m looking at you, @TopGuest). Hilton is one of the former and has now impressed me twice in a row by responding to my simple Tweet, and they did so nearly instantaneously this time.

My first issue this past October was directed at the HHonors Twitter address for a failed promotion issue I was having. Within 15 minutes, a representative responded with an offer to help and my issue was very well resolved the following day.

This past Saturday, I was staying at a Hilton Garden Inn, my first stay ever at this brand, and experienced children running up and down the halls on my floor playing and having fun. It was totally fine for five minutes, but it continued and continued. After about 30 minutes, it stopped, so I thought that was the end of it. Minor annoyance… kids will be kids, but I wish the parents had intervened earlier.

During my stay, though, I noticed the abundance of kids everywhere and also acting out without much parental control, so reached out to Twitter particularly interested to know if Garden Inns are predominantly family-oriented. And yes, it was a Saturday, so business-travel light, but this was my first time with such an abundance of kids that I asked:

Within minutes, probably 10 at most, Hilton Online responded and asked for more detail via a direct message. After sending my mini-complaint and curiosity about the Garden Inn brand, they replied:

Shortly thereafter, I received a call from the front desk manager. She was very apologetic and explained that there was a junior hockey team staying at the property that night and confirmed Garden Inns do see more families compared to the flagship Hilton properties, especially on weekends. She mentioned they’d send someone up to monitor the halls and offered to move my room.

By that time, all had quieted down, so I was pleased with the outreach and thanked her for the information. All was good and I will now take this into consideration for future reservations with Hilton.

Even more impressive, however, was the follow-up email I received on Tuesday from Hilton Worldwide:

Little, simple touches like this email cost nothing, but do more in my mind for brand loyalty than any promotional bonus point campaign. I’m a happy Hilton HHonors member and experiences like this reinforce my decision to remain a Hilton customer.

Finally, I was happy to read that second to last paragraph in the email mentioning the importance my feedback on Twitter had after the issue was resolved. I tweeted:

The acknowledgement in the quoted email above reinforces my desire to always respond when things go right, not just wrong.

Back in August I posted about a targeted offer I received in the mail offering instant Hilton HHonors Gold status and the opportunity to earn bonus points and airline miles after completing five stays. The mailer included a new Gold card and account number with additional verbiage, “If you’re already a HHonors member, please contact Hilton Reservations and Customer Care so your account can be updated to qualify for this offer.”

As a Gold already, that’s exactly what I did. It took two phone calls as the first agent seemed overwhelmed in trying to find the offer code and after more than 30 minutes, the line “mysteriously” disconnected. The second agent was far more proficient, merged the accounts and assured me this promotion was active on my existing account. Here’s the promotion info:

• Instant Gold through March 2013
• Complete five stays between July 1 and October 31, 2011 to earn 25,000 HHonors points and 5,000 airline miles
• Activate by October 31, 2011

Additional information necessary for this promo failure turned success:

• The letter was dated June 27, 2011 and mailed USPS Standard mail (the cheapest bulk method).
• I received it on July 29, 2011
• I called that night and merged the accounts as mentioned above
• The letter did not state registration was required before a qualifying stay (and believe me, I read the fine print thoroughly)

I completed my fifth stay October 10^th and expected the bonus points to hit immediately as Hilton’s system seems to do in my experience. Nothing, so Wednesday night I called and spoke with agent April who after researching and speaking with “upper management” (a call center supervisor), came back to say, “you didn’t register until July 29^th, so your earlier July stays don’t qualify.”

I explained the USPS Standard mail delay and the fact the letter nowhere mentions registration was required before the first stay. She responded, “Sir, we’re not responsible for the mail and you don’t qualify. We can’t override the system.” It’s pointless to try to rebut with the rationality of the situation, so I thanked her and hung up.

Instead of doing the “call back and try another agent” frequent flyer tried & true method, I decided to test social media outreach. Here, then, was my tweet after that failed phone call:

Surprisingly that late at night, a mere 15 minutes later Hilton responded:

I had gone to bed by then, so Thursday morning I DM’d my account number and brief explanation and within moments:

Not 20 minutes later my phone rang and I spoke with representative Jonathan. I never supplied my phone number on Twitter, but he was swift enough to get it from my account. After a brief conversation bringing him up to speed on the above, I emailed him the promotion letter in question.

After about an hour, Jonathan called me back, apologized, mentioned the 25,000 points have been added to my account and the 5,000 airline miles will be processed. He further asked if there was anything else he could do for me. Now THAT is excellent customer service. I thanked him for the expeditiousness of the outreach and quick resolution and wished him a pleasant day. I later tweeted:

I am highly impressed with Hilton’s social media responsiveness and my issue was resolved with incredible ease via that medium. Call center agents are always hit or miss no matter the industry and I always cringe when needing to call one. Their necessity will likely never go away, but I’m happy technology has advanced to the point we can sometimes bypass the irritatingly inconsistent call center experience.

Well done Hilton HHonors!

(Hmm… did my blog have anything to do with it?)

A week and a half ago I posted a review of Everbread’s Haystack airfare search engine that provides functionality similar to ITA Software’s Matrix Airfare Search. I noted its similarities to ITA and also called out some glaring shortcomings, such as its inability to search for flights with flexible days (+/- x-days, month long, etc), not pulling in the full schedule of outbound & return pairings, lack of fare basis codes, tax breakout and more. I closed by acknowledging the fact it is a demo version and greater enhancements would likely rollout with the next release.

The day after that post, Everbread’s Deputy COO Filip Filipov sent me an email commending my thorough review and agreed with some of my criticism, but offered to show me a preview of additional features and functionality through a WebEx screen sharing conference call. I was thrilled for the direct contact by Everbread and scheduled a time the following week for the call.

After our brief introductory conversation, Filip logged in with his development credentials and took me on a tour of Haystack’s actual current functionality. He mentioned the reason for the limited capability public release version currently out there is in part to avoid revealing the highly proprietary successes they’ve developed behind the scenes. What he ended up showing me is indeed the next generation of airfare search engines and confirmed in my mind that Haystack is perhaps more than just competition for ITA Software, but also a front-runner integrating booking abilities into social media.

Believe me in that I really wanted to be taking screen captures during our call, but out of sincere respect for him taking an hour out of his day I refrained. Here are some of the highlights:

• On my initial test drive, Southwest didn’t appear in the results and I was curious to find out why. It was partly my fault, but partly not. There is a filter item I didn’t include (low cost carrier) that isn’t pre-defaulted. That was my error, but attempting it again also left Southwest off. They’re still developing worldwide connections to low cost carriers, but have had success with many European LCCs. He mentioned it can sometimes be challenging to get the appropriate API access from certain carriers to make this happen (think Ryanair, for example).
• Total breakout of taxes is shown and fully itemized by tax code.
• Full fare basis information is shown.
• Haystack validates its own fare construction against that of GDSs to ensure a consistent 100% match.
• The system can be easily modified to accommodate agency-specific programming needs.
• Expanded date range searching is a reality, currently up to +/- 15 days, which effectively gives a 30-day view and will be further developed to go +/- 30 days.
• Charter flights are included in search results, which can be a very significant advantage over published schedules in some markets.
• Private fares, bulk fares, and other non-published fares are fully supported.
• Delta Air Lines and Malaysia Airlines currently have Facebook integration that allows ticketing, but what he showed me is the absolute future of integrating social media and travel. Want to go see one of your long-distance friends on Facebook next weekend? Based on location data saved in profiles, Haystack will show the lowest fares for you to take a quick trip to see them and a link for booking the ticket.
• Haystack will return every possible combination of airlines and schedules well beyond what the demo version currently shows and that of ITA.
• Haystack has been proven to be faster than ITA in most search comparisons.

It’s an incredibly impressive technology and the company has secured many well-known clients across Europe. The demo version out there now has a sidebar ability to provide feedback, so if you’d like to offer your own suggestions, sign up for an account here. ITA Software hasn’t released new functionality, but I’d have to be certain they’re also developing enhanced capabilities that Google will eventually rollout live. It will be fun to monitor both companies and while they duke it out for market share, the products they release will do nothing but enhance we travelers’ lives.