Takin’ it to the tweets
Is this what it takes to get customer service these days? Unfortunately the answer is yes – yes it is.
The short story is that I’d never received my new membership card from wnyc (local public radio station). The long story is that this is what I had to resort to – posting my grievance on my Twitter page to get the station’s attention. And I did get wnyc’s attention – via tweet, via email and via phone call.
Excerpted from my Twitter page:
November 11th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Clever headline. Even cleverer resolution. Too bad you couldn’t get reimbursed for your time and initiative. To your question, though: Yes, exposing the company/business’ lack of follow-through is about the only way to get service today. For-profit and not-for-profit businesses are rife with stories of hiring staff to monitor tweets, e-mails and other postings for just such occurrences; in some companies, senior leadership actually drops-in to occasionally monitor such chatter. You would think that it would more sense to invest that same $$$ in customer training and then hold staff accountable. Go figure. That was then and this is now. And, in that same vein, one thing is for sure — those businesses/organizations who do not provide services or follow-through on promises cannot afford the bad marketing that electronically lives forever.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
It wasn’t my intent to take this route, dirty laundry in public and all that. Businesses need to realize though that this is an easy outlet, and more and more people/customers/members will use it to get attention or satisfaction when traditional methods go unattended. And depending on how large an audience the disgruntled customer has, a public grievance could be potentially lethal to a business.
If I were running a biz, I’d find a way to get my customer service department in order – fast.