Nov 14th, 2008
Twittering and Blogging My Way to Improved Customer Service
My blogging buddy Mrs. Micah just put up a post about using Twitter and a blog to vent describe customer service experiences and to have representatives from the companies putting out such service contact the Twitterer/blogger in short order to try to remedy the situation. It appears that many companies have representatives (officially or not) on Twitter who look into these types of situations.
I’ve personally been contacted by a representative (actually more than one) of Sprint when I’ve posted about my woes on Twitter as well as right here on Uncommon Cents. They were able to work out my problem at the time (which I thought was ridiculously simple to remedy, but for some reason the front line folks couldn’t handle it) and sent a letter to Sprint thanking them for their efforts. Similar stories abound with companies such as Comcast, which Mrs. Micah mentions in her posting.
On the other hand, I had no response from one of the banks on island when I blogged about a poor customer service experience I went through. Interestingly, however, a contact who works at the bank told me that there were many emails and similar floating around the bank after my posting indicating they knew about it. Even more interestingly, this was long after the situation was rectified, and I heard nothing from that company. Did my issue get resolved because I blogged about it? I doubt it, but I cannot say for sure either way.
Can Twittering and blogging improve the responsiveness of customer service departments? My educated guess–from experience–is yes. Does it guarantee improved service? I doubt that seriously. So it may help, and I have a hard time believing it would hurt.
I find it fascinating that the bank was aware of your post but didn’t act on it.
I think that as long as people find ways to make their customer experience very public and something that people can run across when they’re looking for information about the company, smart companies will try to solve those problems. They’ll probably never contact everyone (maybe triage what they think they can handle best).