Gallus1

I’ve just had the best experience ever on a company website responding service solution of, type your questions, we’ll have your answer. Responder, Keegan, solved my problem within three questions. Concise, personable and intuitive. We’re all quick to complain about bad service, I have to applaud my experience here. Well done.

navydevildoc

Do you mean on Alaska Listens? This post makes no sense with no context.

raffe

I know that feeling. First you feel stressed up and try to find some strength to make that first contact. Then suddenly you get friendly and helpful answers that swiftly leads to solving you problem. And after you feel grateful and happy. That do not always happen, but when it does, it feels really great

Gallus1

On Alaska Airlines website on “contact us” there is a button labelled “Chat”. What context do you need. I couldn’t do what I needed on my booking. Chap did it for me within 3 questions and he was super efficient. What more do you want?

Eastbay1K

This post clears up the matter. It wasn't clear exactly what the issue may have been. Now it is.

Gallus1

Apologies, I don’t understand why the particulars of the problem needs to be discussed. The intention was to point out the outstanding service received. I think I made it clear enough initially that it was through the website and a type questions for response medium.
Really not something to get so critical about. 😧

RAD_PDX

Glad you had a favorable experience. I think one main reason people might be interested in knowing what general types of issues you were dealing with would simply be to compare it to their experiences and the replies they received. Depending on the issue, the Alaska Listens responses I have received over the past year have ranged from stock emails that don't even pertain to what I wrote about, to phone calls from customer service managers apologizing for and discussing particular issues that I noted regarding inflight service.

Gallus1

Perfectly fair and understandable. I only wish the initial response had been so eloquently put.
To reiterate, my objective was only to give praise in a world full of complaints.

For full clarity: I travel from UK to California every year to visit friends. One of my friends gifted me a flight on Alaska to Maui for a group trip. As I have OW status through another airline I wanted to attach my details to my booking in order to guest them into a lounge. This wasn’t possible through the online system so I clicked on the “chat” box and within 2 minutes it was all done for me. No fuss, no drama, just, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
An outstanding result in todays booking management systems for most airlines IMHO.

notquiteaff

To be fair to navydevildoc, my first reaction upon stumbling over your first post can be summarized in three letters and one punctuation mark. Huh?

I am glad the post has been clarified, and also that you received good service. I often receive good service, from Alaska and others, and especially requests like yours are usually efficiently handled by chat or SMS or in the past Twitter support. What bugs me a bit is that our expectations are so low that answering a customer service request efficiently is now considered "going above expectations". After a recent Hyatt stay I received a survey that asked a bunch of questions, including how the checkin experience was. The agent was perfectly pleasant and efficient - nothing negative to report. She didn't give me a suite upgrade or anything I didn't technically deserve or expect. The survey options were something like

5 - far exceeded expecation
4 - exceeded expecation
3 - met expecations
2 - below expecation
1 - attrocious

3 would have been the correct and fair answer, but I understand that anything but top scores is considered a negative. Which is ridiculous, and so I didn't partake in the survey.

Gallus1

To be honest, I think a lot of companies have these online “service response” facilities such as the chat box I clicked on, as nothing more than a tick box to say they are there for and listening to their customers. It’s highly unusual in my experience to get a human being and not a robot/AI responding, let alone for any issue to be resolved.

You are correct in your statement that our estimations are so low that we are delighted beyond belief when we receive actual service when it comes to online/telephone customer service. However, I feel strongly that we should say, YAY, when it’s good. This also makes the collective complaining louder and with balance.
Edit: navydevildoc no offence meant 😔