The pandemic will change customer service forever, now yelling on social media has lost its sting

A few years ago I approached all of the UK’s largest airlines to see if I could spend a day in their social media bunkers, watching frazzled customer service staff wrestle with the increasing number of people who use Twitter as their go-to complaints outlet.

I said that I was sympathetic to the carriers: just because a customer is airing their grievance in public does not mean you should apologise to someone whose luggage came out last in the arrivals hall.

All of them declined. The internal organs of airline customer management must be so surrounded with gristle that no one would dare show it to a journalist.

Over the last decade, social media - mainly Facebook and Twitter - has empowered consumers enormously; giving individuals a voice with the potential of hundreds of thousands of ears has helped many right wrongs that otherwise might have been ignored.

Nowadays, no company is so bold, so heartless and ruthless that they can allow a public shaming without at least pretending to help, not even Ryanair.

But has all this progress in the fight for customer rights been undone by the pandemic? Possibly.

So vast and varied have been the complaints over the last six months, that sending a message in capital letters to British Airways over Twitter about how your lost bag is still very much lost will likely just fall by the wayside.

At one point, Abta, the UK travel association, estimated that £5billion was owed to British travellers in refunds; arbitration group Resolver said it saw complaints about travel agents surge by two thirds. It was, of course, an unprecedented time.

Many, or at least, some, of the hundreds of thousands of Britons owed money - or an explanation - due to disruption caused by the pandemic might have had their cases handled effectively and efficiently behind closed doors; and, if not, they may have decided not to turn to their keyboard.

But many did. Where is my refund? It has been 300 years. Why is my flight cancelled? Why isn’t my flight cancelled? How am I going to get home? How am I going to get away?

Some of my favourites were those levelled at the diplomatic corp. The UK ambassador to Peru Kate Harrison came in for some heavy criticism after being accused of flying home while scores of Britons were still stranded under a harsh and open-ended lockdown.

One such chap in Cusco, on Twitter, mentioned - or @’ed - a variety of journalists as well the British embassy in Lima with pleas for help from Germany: “There is a German flight on April 19 from Lima to Germany. Can you please liaise with German embassy to get UK citizens on this?”

A desperation that even in a world deafened by the sound of chaos cut through the noise.

But most were lost in the muddle. Airlines, most larger than your average tour operator or travel agent, had default responses about ‘apologising but they are receiving a huge volume of queries’.

The fob-off we have all become so used to when trying to reach call centres has finally arrived on Twitter.

So what now for the future of complaining on Twitter? Of course thousands are still at it.

A glance at Easyjet’s social media page sees a few requests for details about their refunds from May, several asking whether they are able to go to France, Spain, Portugal tomorrow, and one bloke complaining about being asked to wear a face mask.

Ryanair’s page is the same: someone has been on the phone for three hours apparently, then gets cut off, another has filled out three refund forms and not seen a penny, a third has lost his laptop.

As the world still finds its feet, opening borders and easing travel restrictions, many businesses, especially airlines, are only now able to get a grip on what the last six months has done to their MO, and what it might again over the next six.

But I bet, in a post-pandemic world, the threshold for a tweet to have those in the social media customer service bunker scrambling for a resolution has been raised quite severely - think murder, embezzlement, subterfuge - and there it will stay.