subject: Twitter – A Customer Service Back Door [print this page] Twitter A Customer Service Back Door Twitter A Customer Service Back Door
Tales of companies that troll Twitter searching for their unhappy customers are popping up all over the internet. Tweets abound from once unhappy customers who are shocked by the effectiveness of Twitter to get their complaints resolved. The companies themselves are, of course, capitalizing on the incidents in the form of re-tweets.
Anything that improves customer service is a step in the right direction and, as long as the problems are solved, it doesn't matter how the companies capitalize on their customer service successes. The whole concept of "good, fast, customer service" seemed like a pipedream just five years ago and Twitter is changing all that.
Twitter is a Customer's Last Resort When a customer has a problem with a product or service, their first inclination is to speak directly with a human being who can resolve the problem. Consequently, most requests for service begin with a phone call. Call centers often make the situation worse, not better. Customers find complicated voice mail systems and long wait times annoying. Email is worse than a phone call; sometimes it takes hours or days to hear back from a customer service rep.
Customers turn to Twitter when they have run up against a "brick wall" elsewhere. Twitter provides a "back door" to a company's customer service department (providing, of course, that the company is listening in the first place).
Network Solutions A website company in the UK urgently needed to update a client's website, which was hosted by Network Solutions. The webmaster could view the client's site and log into the FTP, but they could not log into the account to make an important edit. The webmaster tried to contact Network Solutions directly, but was unable to, and his frustration led him to tweet about the connection issues. Within the hour, Network Solutions support contacted him and, through emails and a phone call, the problem was resolved.
Network Solutions was monitoring Twitter for service problems. If they had not been listening, this customer and their client would have had nothing good to say about Network Solutions and their dissatisfaction would have been broadcast to others. The lesson to be learned here is that by the time a customer complaint reaches Twitter, it has escalated to "code red" and should be dealt with immediately.
