kudos to the folks who had their thinking caps on about using twitter to find and resolve customer issues. Maybe we're not the IT dinosaur we fear we are.

Delta Monitors Twitter to Remedy Customer Complaints - BusinessWeek

FTB excerpt from the 2 page article:
"Delta is out in front, especially for the airline industry," Holtz said. "What people are looking for in a lot of these situations is just acknowledgment, and to have someone try to resolve their problem. It shouldn't matter which way they reach out, whether it's by phone or e-mail or on Twitter."

Delta's Twitter account is run by customer-service employees who use the direct-message function to privately swap information and view passengers' itineraries. The account is watched from 8 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. New York time on business days. Brice fired off his posting to the world's largest airline and headed to a hotel to sleep when he was stranded.

No Waiting
"Instead of waiting in a long line with everyone else, I knew on Twitter they would get to me right away," said Brice, of Ogden, Utah, who has flown 30 times this year.

Delta maintains a main company account as well as one dedicated to service issues, @DeltaAssist. Remedying complaints via Twitter also scrubs the carrier's image, because passengers camped out in airports after late or canceled flights have time on their hands to grumble online.


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Passenges grumble online? What about their pilots!?