Amazing response from AF to a tweet

I returned Air France TUN – CDG – LHR in business earlier this week, amidst the strike in France. I was initially quite pleased that my TUN – CDG leg was only 1 hour late, but I was a bit disappointed with the lacklustre service on the TUN – CDG flight. My biggest gripe was that Air France seems to have the policy to hold off on a drinks service until after the meals are heated and ready to be served, at which point they serve the meals and then drinks. It meant that I waited almost an hour to be served my meal, and even longer before I got a drink. I had noticed a similar pattern on the way down, but on that flight it did not take so long to get the meals out, so it was not so noticeable. I was surprised that on a 2 ½ hour flight, AF does not do a normal drinks – meal – drinks – coffee service in business, as you I would normally expect on BA or LH, which I fly quite frequently. On top of this it was quite funny that AF had no white wine on board either flight. So when I returned to London, I sent out a humourous tweet about first world problems and no white wine on AF flights.

Within a few minutes I had a response tweet from AF, asking for me to message them with my flight numbers and ticket number. After which I separately told them about the issues on timing on the food/drink on board. Again a very quick response telling me a case file had been opened and they would be in touch. A day later, I received a phone call (!) from a very nice gentleman from AF who wanted to know more about what I thought of the service. He was an extremely courteous, native English speaking customer service representative, which shocked me as you never encounter them when you speak to AF, KL or Flying Blue.

At the end of the call, he offered me, unsolicited, a voucher good for £150 off any AF/KL/DL flight as a gesture of goodwill. I was really shocked – in a good way – as I never even intended to ask for anything, and just thought my tweet into the ether was a jokey vent. I’m very impressed with the response, but I’m left scratching my head as to why this generated the response it had – I’ve had far worse experiences for which I’ve been fobbed off with a form letter. Was it because I had tweeted? I should add that while I’m Star and BA Gold, I’ve dropped to the lowest level in Flying Blue, so they can’t really consider me a preferred customer. I’m not complaining about the treatment; just the opposite, in fact. But thinking more how I can get them to listen when I have a real problem?

Hi flydrive
Agree with travelworld2 ……..most companies worth their salt these days will have invested in a Social media team. Ours uses sophisticated software to identify key words, allowing us to intervene thus reducing the chance of something relatively trivial going viral……
In the old days a bad experience was mentioned to about 20 close friends and relatives who would then possibly relate it on again by 20 fold. Now its one click away from a global audience!

And as someone from generation x ,I find it quite scary actually!
Strangely, companies seem to be fixated with Twitter, Facebook etc ,and forgetting that if they mange a normal complaint badly, the aggrieved customer is just a login away from the same negative result….

At the risk of sounding like a High Court judge in the 1960’s (The Beatles, a popular beat combo M’Lord) the entire ‘tweeting’ thing rather like Facebook has simply passed me by. I should say I do use social media (LinkedIn) but Twitter and Facebook are things I associate with my children not the adults I do business with.

This may of course be a reflection of the fact my commercial life is 100% Business to Business with no public involvement.

Reading some of the comments here however makes me think I may be wrong. What do others think ?