No Phone… Just Email and Facebook

I was at an airline baggage office last week because my bag hadn’t showed up yet. I was complaining about my rerouting… I was supposed to fly back from San Jose but instead had been rerouted from San Francisco to Las Vegas then to Atlanta and finally back home. While there I commiserated with a young soldier who was trying to locate a lost bag, he had flown from Burlington, Vermont, to New York, then to Atlanta and finally with me to Columbia, SC. He too was missing his bag – which we learned had been shipped with another person to Pasco, Washington. I was at home, but the soldier was only in Columbia for a day. The next day he was bound back to Atlanta to go to Zhou Shan, China, from there to Misawa, Japan. From Misawa he was going to be shipped to an undisclosed location – he was carrying his sealed orders with him.

The airline rep arranged to have his bag shipped to him in Misawa, except she needed to connect with him once there. He wasn’t sure if his cell phone was going to work, and he wasn’t going to break the seal to tell her where he was being sent once he landed. All of a sudden the young soldier said he would have access to email and Facebook, so he volunteered those IDs. He was certain he would check his Facebook page at every destination… unfortunately the representative wasn’t allowed to access Facebook. She asked for an exception, called her company and got permission to communicate with him via email and Facebook.

A week later I was bound for another city but checked in the terminal to see what had happened, thankfully, the soldier had received his bag because he was able to share his final destination via Facebook, proof that Facebook is more than a social site – you can use it for communication, customer service, sales, loyalty – the potential abounds.

Make plans to join us on June 26 for our Service In Action call focused on the Three Social Media Absolutes.