Panic-Stricken Customer & Airlines on Twitter

Senior Media Coordinator

I can finally publish this blog post without worry of ruining a surprise that had been in motion for about six months. Without spilling all of the details of my personal life, I’ll get to the point of this post.

I had booked a flight to California through Virgin America back in November. Plans changed in early January when my fiancé decided he wanted to come too. So, luckily he was able to get on the same flight there AND back that I had booked three months prior (thanks to an amazing deal through TravelZoo.com!). Now it was just a matter of getting seats next to each other.

That particular day in January, Virgin America happened to be switching their online registration system, and therefore nothing could be done in terms of changing seats or really anything else; and getting through to a representative on the phone was close to impossible (someone I happened to talk to via Twitter had waited close to 4 hours before she reached someone. Who has that kind of patience is beyond me!). So where does someone go when they can’t get through on the phone? Social media, obviously.

Virgin America had put extra people on their Twitter handle that day (or days) so that they could cover all of the inquiries and panic-stricken customers that came their way. I wasn’t quite sure how they were attending to these semi-confidential issues, but I would soon found out…

I ended up first sending a direct message to someone else that Virgin had mentioned, saying to DM them and they would help. I asked if they had been having the same problem I was (not getting through after 3 hours on the phone!!), and the other person kindly responded, we had a little back and forth, and I was soon on my way to changing my flight after tweeting at Virgin America about my problem. They told me to DM them with the issue and specifics, and they would help.

Below you’ll find my interaction with the Virgin America Twitter handle, and if you look at the time stamps, you’ll see that all of this happened within 20 minutes of my first DM!! So impressive, and the greatest way to use social media for customer service. They certainly kept their social media-savvy customers happy that day… I wonder about the rest!

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