Taking to Twitter when something goes wrong with an airline can be effective -- but it can also be maddening and time-consuming.
Service is a newly-launched app that wants to make customer service interactions with airlines (as well as other types of businesses) quick and painless.
Customer service interactions that can drag out over days on Twitter are good for neither the company nor business:
@uv_RAYzz Sorry to hear you say this. Pls let me know if I can be of assistance via Twitter. *NG— Delta Assist (@DeltaAssist) January 14, 2016
@deedeelincoln Hi, Im sorry about that. What flight was it? AC— Ryanair (@Ryanair) January 11, 2016
The seven-month-old startup acts as a mediator between disgruntled customers and image-conscious businesses.
"We're a neutral, third party solution," Michael Schneider, Service's founder and CEO, told Mashable. "We don't believe that the customer is always right. If the business acted appropriately, we'll still listen to the customer and express empathy -- we're more like therapy at that point. But when the customer is right, we'll fight like hell to get them something fair."
According to Schneider, there are only two options when dealing with a customer service issue: "You can do nothing or you can waste time, spending 45 minutes on hold."
Filing a complaint with Service takes less than a minute, Schneider said, and once the app has all the information about a case, the customer can simply wait for a solution.
The company has been working on customer service issues since June, but in December Service went mobile with an app.
Half of Service's 12 employees resolve customer issues while the other half work on developing the software to make response times faster.
The app won't necessarily provide a better solution than a disgruntled customer could get for themselves, but it could save time. The number one source of complaints that Services sees are in the travel industry.
"The lion's share of travel complaints are with airlines," Schneider said. "Cancelled flights, delayed flights, baggage, all that. But we also deal a lot with hotels and car rentals." (The number two complaint is with telecommunications companies.)
"The response has been pretty incredible," Schneider said. "If you look on Twitter, every day people are tweeting that we've saved them 45 minutes or that we got them money they were never expecting."
Hang up the phone and stop wasting time. @service app - does the dirty work for you. Thank god. https://t.co/eE926bZiXM— JARED LETO (@JaredLeto) December 17, 2015
Adam from @service just got me a mileage refund I'd written off as a lost cause. It's like Uber, but for avoiding painful customer svc calls— Jonathan Frankel (@jfrankel13) January 12, 2016
Service is currently free, but Schneider notes they're "not a nonprofit."
The business is currently analyzing its user data and figuring out how best to make profit: who to charge and how much: "If I can keep it free for customers, that is my goal," Schneider said.