How PVR Cinemas enhanced their brand by offering great customer service on Twitter.

Often we have complained that most brands don't engage on Social Media. Most of them have presence on the networks but hardly any of them respond to any customer queries or complaints.

But I was pleasantly surprised when PVR Cinemas not only responded to my complaint but also resolved it on Twitter.

The story began on the 24th March when I was trying to book tickets for Django Unchained on the PVR site. The show was for the next day 25th March, which also happened to be my birthday. Those of you who know me well, would realize that I never work on my birthday and mostly spend the day doing things that I enjoy doing.

Django was top of my list because I had seen the earlier series with Franco Nero and being a Tarentino fan I was not going to miss out on this masterpiece.

Now as I tried to book the ticket, the site threw up an exceptional error after I had filled in my card details. I waited for a while but the ticket never came through. I did not pursue the matter then but the next day I went up to the counter and bought a ticket just before the show. I was sure that the charges would be reversed as I have seen this happen a few times when the transaction does not go through.

A few days later I called up my credit card help line and after listening to music and pressing many digits I was put through to a customer service executive. He confirmed my worst fears that the transaction had gone through and money claimed by PVR. He gave me the transaction id and said that the bank could not do anything only PVR could resolve the issue now.

Now I had two options either to go back to Forum Mall in Koramangala Bangalore and talk to the PVR officials there or to try my luck with their website. Being a ardent devotee of the digital world I tried the website.

I tried searching for a contact for the PVR site but all I got was a form page and a delhi number. This is  when my good friend and blogger Nikhil Narayanan  suggested I try their social presence. So I got on to twitter and reached out to the PVR cinemas Twitter handle .

I tweeted about my problem and left the tweet there for a while. within 24hrs I received a reply to my tweet asking me to elaborate on the problem. Which I did.

Then the PVR Cinema handle asked me to mail the transaction id to the mail id and they would check and see how they can help me. A day later I received a mail that the traction would be reversed and money credited to my account. The amount was finally credited that week.

I was happy to get the money back but delighted that finally Indian brands have started engaging customers on social channel. So what are the lessons for other brands

1. Please don't set up Twitter handles or Facebook pages if you plan not to interact with customers online.
2. Please don't hire a bored intern to monitor the handles, rather train your own customer support people to manage the social channels.
3. Once you do get a complaint on social media the whole world would know about it, so handle issues swiftly and try to resolve them to the best of your ability.

In conclusion I want to leave everyone with the transcript of the Twitter conversation.

As usual comments, incidents and your experiences welcome.