When Peter Shankman joking tweeted that he would love to have a Morton’s Steakhouse porterhouse waiting for him when he landed at the Newark airport, he probably didn’t think anyone was listening. Shankman tweeted to the official @Mortons Twitter account before taking off from Tampa, Florida. He had eaten some grouper for lunch earlier that day, but didn’t have any time to pick up a proper dinner before boarding his 4:30 p.m. flight. Before the plan took off, Shankman simply asked for a porterhouse to be waiting when he landed.
Little did he know that someone in Morton’s social media department was actively monitoring the account at the time. In the two and a half hours of flight time, Morton’s corporate got approval to feed Mr. Shankman and ordered a porterhouse steak at a Morton’s restaurant about 25 miles away from the Newark airport.
They also had to arrange for a driver to deliver the meal, track down Shankman’s flight, figure out the gate where the plane was landing and have a tuxedo-dressed server waiting at baggage claim when Shankman departed the airplane. Shankman was shocked to find the server grinning when left the security gate and went onto rave about Mortons on Twitter as well as his personal blog. Even Shankman’s cat got a few scraps of a delicious porterhouse after eating the meal back home.
However, Mortons likely reacted so quickly because Shankman has about 100,000 Twitter followers as well as being the author of a book about customer service through social media called Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World. Shankman attributes the fast response time to the fact that he’s a consistent customer of the establishment and that the corporate arm of Mortons simply has a quality social media department.
