News and notes from around the interweb:
- British Airways is no longer the European airline carrying the most passengers out of New York. Norwegian is.
- Alaska Airlines now offers customer service via text. The number is 82008. Alaska thinks they can handle 40% of customer service calls via text. (For the past year Hawaiian Airlines has offered customer service via text, too.)
The help you can get via text includes: flight delays and schedule changes, emotional or service support animal requests, seat assignments, upgrades, requesting accessible travel services and questions about the Alaska frequent flier program, Mileage Plan.
We’re told text message customer service can’t help with making new reservations, voluntary flight changes and cancellations, paid seat upgrades, and enrolling in Mileage Plan if you don’t have an upcoming reservation.
- Triple miles and elite qualifying credit from Malaysia Airlines, hats off to Mark Ross-Smith for driving value on the earn side of the program that can mean the expensive redemption side makes sense. One first class roundtrip with this promo can earn top tier elite status which is oneworld emerald and gets VIP airport meet and greet service in Kuala Lumpur.
- Clever.
Every European city pic.twitter.com/TwG6pejLRE
— Alex Honcharuk (@ohoncharuk) October 7, 2018
- Richard Branson says Elon Musk needs to sleep and delegate
- What the chimes in aircraft cabins mean.
Calling is so incredibly painful and old-school
and text messaging lets one customer service rep handle far more throughput
I can’t believe the infrastructure isn’t in place to handle everything over text
Just tried AS text for premium seat issue. Works great.
While texting might seem more efficient, it does not allow for a complete expression of the problem, and also leads to more misunderstandings. Tone of voice does not come across in writing as well, leading to these issues.
Good customer service should be a mix of text and voice based. In my experience, grievance redressals are easier handled by voice, and not text