How 14,000 people on Twitter and some of Four Seasons' dirty laundry were linked together by a social media work order.
Building operators around the world–or, at least, around Twitter–took a sharp breath in the moment Rich Barton decided to tweet out a work order request for his room in the Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas.
One reason this tweet brings into sharp relief the need for easy-to-use building occupant feedback loops is that Rich Barton is not an average hotel guest. Rich is a former Microsoft executive, and founder of the travel website Expedia, the real estate website Zillow, and career website Glassdoor. 14,000 people follow his tweets.
The Four Seasons social media team did a good job here. As captured in the image above, you’ll see the hotel’s corporate office responded, looping in the property team as well. As the conversation continued, the local team engaged directly with Rich and also the third party Alex Bugeja who decided to weigh in on the fray.
Of course, handling work orders over Twitter isn’t easy, and our example here reveals this. For one thing, it was the corporate office, not the local property, that responded first. And it took corporate nine hours to do so. While Alex thought this was funny, it’s never fun for building operators to have their dirty laundry–in this case, a leaky faucet–aired publicly on social media. If your building doesn’t have an easy-to-use feedback loop for occupants to keep work orders in-house, you might want to consider monitoring Twitter and other social media sites for occupant requests.
