KLM Is First Airline to Show Customer Service Wait Times on Twitter

KLM Airlines wants to show customers just how serious it is about social customer service. So, in another example of the offline world moving online, the Dutch carrier installed a live wait ticker on in its Twitter account.

The expected response time display is updated every 5 minutes so customers have an idea of how long an answer will take, even it's longer than desired.

The social media live response time can also be seen on KLM's customer support page and will soon appear on KLM's Facebook page.

Twitter doesn't currently offer a live wait time feature so the airline is updating its cover photo to keep customers up to date. The carrier promises to respond to customers' requests and questions within a hour.

KLM's Social Chops

According to Skift's competitive intelligence dashboard SkiftIQ, KLM sends 437 tweets a day. It is the third most active airline Twitter account after American and United.

The large majority of its tweets, 93.2 percent, are replies to users. The average response time is a hour and 38 minutes. This is longer than its guaranteed response time, which has improved over time, and phenomenally better than the industry average of 12 hours.

The airline's social team responds to tweets 7 days a week, although 75 percent are sent on weekdays. It also tweets 24 hours a day and almost 40 percent of tweets are sent at night.