A post from Lufthansa’s official account on social media platform X is going viral, and people are divided. Some find the post to be highly unprofessional, while some find it to be oddly refreshing (yet still highly unprofessional). 😉
Lufthansa tells customer to stop messaging, lol
An X user tagged Lufthansa’s official account, and wrote the following:
Why are you ignoring my messages and emails @lufthansa ? You approved our payment months ago, yet you dodge responsibility and act unlawfully! Shame on you! Answer your emails and process Case C-999983-G1X8 IMMEDIATELY!
Lufthansa responded almost immediately, essentially telling the customer the response isn’t going to “magically” change, and that he should stop asking on different platforms:
We’ve already responded to you numerous times via DM on different social media platforms. The response isn’t going to magically change just because you’re asking the same question on X now. /Flo
This post ended up going viral. It currently has 1.2 million views, but that number keeps increasing. A little over 20 hours later, the airline apologized in a follow-up post, writing the following:
We sincerely apologize for our last reply to you – this is not the way we treat our passengers. We understand your frustration in this matter and are doing everything we can to speed up the process. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
People are divided on Lufthansa’s social media response
I think we can all agree that Lufthansa’s response to a customer on X was unprofessional. Admittedly we don’t know the full story here. The traveler seemingly claims that some sort of compensation was approved, but hasn’t been paid. I don’t know if that’s true or not, though I’d sure love to know the backstory.
I would imagine that anyone who has worked in frontline customer service has probably wanted to respond to a customer in this way at one point or another (or in some cases, maybe constantly). And I’ll also say that the internet adds a level of anonymity that makes so many customers complete jerks.
You know, you’ll see an airline posting about a new route or lounge on social media, and then there are dozens of responses from people all basically just saying “f*** you, you s*** airline, you lost my bags, I’m never flying you again.” I don’t know how the people working the social media accounts have the patience to be apologetic and deal with customers, when they receive such a lack of respect.
Also, to Lufthansa’s credit, at least it seems the airline still has humans responding to customer service complaints, rather than AI (unless they’ve programmed their AI to be that sassy). There’s something to be said for that!
I see some people suggesting that Lufthansa must’ve outsourced customer service, and that this is the reason for this kind of a response. If anything, this response strikes me as being a completely blunt German. Germans don’t really beat around the bush with sharing how they feel, and that’s very much the vibe here.
I remember a Lufthansa flight I took earlier this year, where someone came up to first class during boarding and was obviously trying to take pictures of seats in a way where they tried to make it look like they were sitting in them.
The flight attendant proceeded to come up to the guy and said “what do you think you are doing?” He responded by making up some excuse about how he just wanted to see the seat, and she responded with “no, I know what you are doing, you are trying to fake that you are flying in first class for social media.” Lol, perhaps it was a bit aggressive, but she certainly shut him up, and she definitely clocked him on that one.
Bottom line
Lufthansa is getting quite a bit of criticism after a customer demanded immediate help with a compensation issue. A representative for the airline responded by telling the customers that they’ve responded to him numerous times on different social media platforms, and that the response wouldn’t magically change because he’s asking on X.
Well, that caught the attention of a lot of people, and a little under a day later, the airline apologized. So I guess maybe asking on X does magically change the response? 😉
What do you make of Lufthansa’s response to a customer on X?
For whatever reason tweets to @American Air end up in my tweeter feed. Some of the people are real winners. Screaming and dropping F bombs because the plane hasn't taken off even though ATC has weather holds. I'd get sassy, or worst, with some of my responses if I was on that Twitter team.
Online snark only works for Ryanair!
In all seriousness, the apology sounds more like damage control from the previous tweet, than acknowledging the sentiment was wrong.
You wanted a human response, you got a human response. All the smoke.
I genuinely think that this was the perfect response. And yes, i'm usually very critical of my home airline.
This character already had contact with LH and at times processing does take time. Why bring it up again on social media?
There was sth similar recently where someone was complaining about not getting to use "priority lane" on what seemed to be on arriving flight at MUC. I was fuming. "I was fumming so much i was fumigating!" Hi #BBUK.
Getting sassy and unprofessional with customers on social media? Isn’t that Ryanair’s schtick?
Wendy's is the GOAT of sassy responses on X.
Truly, I don’t envy the social media folks at airlines. Sifting through endless complaints about bags, compensation, and scams? That must wear on you. In this case, the reply made sense, given all the noise they deal with daily. Some people keep posting the same things for weeks.
By no means Karen-style behaviors of complaining customers are acceptable, but quite a majority of them wouldn't have happened if the airline did the job properly at first place.
Let alone the simple fact that two wrongs don't "magically" make a right.
"this is not the way we treat our passengers" - LOL, it very much is, this is straight out of their regular playbook. No other airline hates its customers so openly. Doesn't matter if it's CS or Carsten himself. It just happened to explode this time.
And no, that response would in no way be accepted in a CS role in Germany. Just because people are a bit more straightforward in the personal life doesn't mean this is somewhat acceptable towards customers.
The only way to fight entitlement is with truth. Kudos to the Rep