Twitter customer service can be customer service at its best, what it should be and stopped being years ago. It can be personal, real-time, proactive and, best of all, effective.
I see some companies who standout. They not only respond when directly contacted (@ed on Twitter). They monitor Twitter for mentions of their company, and they respond anytime someone mentions them by name. Beyond all of that, and read this carefully because this is the crucial element, they make things happen and address or fix the issue quickly.
One example was @shoebuy. I had a gift certificate to Shoebuy.com and it was about a week before a conference when I remembered that. I went there to get some shoes, and I saw no option to get them overnighted. I tweeted about it and didn’t even realize they were on Twitter, so I didn’t say with their @ in the tweet. Within seconds, yes seconds, two different Shoebuy employees on Twitter responded that they could overnight certain brands. It wasn’t easy to determine which brands, so they sent me a link to a full list.
Within an hour, I had ordered my shoes and they arrived the next day. Without that Twitter intervention, I would have been annoyed with Shoebuy and I would not have placed the order at all. I also would have likely told people about this bad experience. Now I can rave about the company. (Like now.)
Many times, however, I see companies doing it wrong. This not only means the resources they are putting into Twitter are wasted, but they are probably causing more damage than good.
Here are what I will describe as the five bad customer service types.
The Retro Customer Service Tweeter
I sent @wachovia a DM this morning asking about an issue with my account. Their response was to call their 800 number. Ummm, why are you on Twitter exactly? I get there are privacy issues, but there are ways to share information via DM that would not be a problem.
If we wanted to endure an 800 number, wait on hold, argue and cajole to get a straight answer, get accidentally knocked off the line, call back and start over… well, we aren’t idiots. Anyone who is on Twitter is surely capable of looking up your toll-free number. We are contacting you on Twitter specifically because we want to avoid all of that. Phone customer service sucks 99.99999 percent of the time (yeah, that’s a real statistic). We despise it.
You can get a monkey to DM people 800 numbers, but I would prefer you hire a savvy human who can contact the right people and fix the issue.
The Multiple Personality Customer Service Tweeter
It is perfectly fine (in fact, wonderful) to have several people within the company and/or on behalf of the company on Twitter. In fact, as my example above shows with @shoebuy, it wasn’t even the official account that contacted me. What is not OK is not clearly specifying which Twitter account is the official one, or the one designated to handle customer service complaints.
We get that you can’t have one human monitoring your account 24/7. But there are ways to handle that. Say in your bio or your background who the various people are. If you want to be personal, have them sign their tweets with -firstname or -initials. But just look at @umatter2charter! This is one. hot. mess!
Twice, I have contacted Charter. Twice I’ve gone at least a day or two because I didn’t properly decipher which of their five (yes FIVE) Twitter customer service accounts was on at that moment. Kudos to them for responding when they get it or make sense of it. But having one account with multiple users would be so much clearer.
As it is now, this is reducing their effectiveness and confusing/irritating their customers on Twitter. It’s also clearly slowing their response time. Beyond that, this will be hard for them to reverse if customers are following or accustomed to tweeting one of the five accounts.
The Oblivious Customer Service Tweeter
First, let me say not being on Twitter is a major fail these days. A year ago, it was no big deal. Today, especially for a major corporation, it is glaring. But it’s possible to be on Twitter and be just as distant to the community as one who is missing. Where is Apple? Seriously. And @itunesmusic is the epitome of the blind Twitter account.
Here are some warning signs of an oblivious tweeter:
- They don’t follow anyone. (Here’s a hint: when you do that, no one can DM you. So they can only complain @ you publicly. You know, where everyone sees it. Mmm-hmmm.)
- They don’t reply to anyone.
- They do nothing but self-promote and sell.
The Two-Faced Customer Service Tweeter
Twice, I complained about AT&T on Twitter. OK, way more than twice, but they acknowledged it twice. They replied publicly and in DM. They asked for my email address, and said the matter would be addressed and someone would be in touch. Twice, I never heard a word.
Whether intentional or just a case of it falling through the cracks, this is shady. Publicly, it saves face. The company looks responsive. But believe me, I have since tweeted that this happened. And now I am blogging about it.
If you say you will help, do it. At least try. Believe me, we don’t forget.
The Good News Customer Service Tweeter
This is a variation of the Oblivious Tweeter above, but an equally annoying one. They are more than happy to chit chat, and to retweet when someone raves about their company. They think contests asking people to follow them to enter is engagement. They think churning out coupons is enough.
But if someone complains on Twitter, they disappear. Or DM and want it taken offline. If you are a company on Twitter, you have to take the good and the bad. You have to address the good and the bad. There are positives to even the most negative tweets. Twitter is a great big free focus group. You should listen. The feedback could be valuable.
Plus, back to @shoebuy, they quickly turned a negative into a positive. That is what people tend to remember. If you respond, that is.
What do you think? Do you have an experience with a company on Twitter that did it just right… or just wrong? I’d love to hear about it.
Customer service illustration based on photo © Ray Smithers.
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Kelby Carr
Kelby Carr is the founder and publisher of Type-A Parent. She also is the organizer of the Type-A Parent Conference. She is the author of the soon-to-be-published Pinterest For Dummies, Portable Edition. You can follow her on Twitter at @typeamom and circle her on Google+.
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17 Responses to 5 Twitter Customer Service Fails
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I recently went to NYC with a group of moms from my area for the Martha Stewart show. (that’s a whole other story!)
I had contacted several hotels via twitter, and several contacted myself or another person in our group who was helping arrange details.
In 4 cases the hotels promised us free wifi, great rates, etc. but when I followed up they disappeared.
I found a great deal at Holiday Inn. They were accommodating, gave us a $99 rate and free wifi and breakfast (which was an actual breakfast!).
While there we went to another hotel for an event, and I bumped into their twitter guy. He said something like, “you should have stayed here!,” and I responded that one of our party had reached out to him after he responded to a tweet, and heard nothing back. In fact, she said she tried more than once.
He didn’t have much to say about that! I had to laugh at the idea that it was a social media conscious hotel, since they never responded!
I was panicking about my Sprint wireless card being bent and broken before Type-A-Mom. Yes, the card was old but I was afraid it wouldn’t work by the time the conference rolled around and my upgrade was not planned until the end of October. 6 weeks after the conference.
I felt frustrated – my options were pay full price 6 weeks before the end of my contract or go to conference without internet. I tweeted my frustration and someone from Sprint contacted me right away. Asked for my email.
They EMAILED me and helped me get a wireless card before the conference. They even called a few days later and asked me if it came in time, etc.
Angela <
Hi Kelby,
Enjoyed your post.
You might also be interested in this story of Twitter customer service win for @DDsD: http://www.pointlessreally.com/?p=102
@katetribe
I was in an accident last summer (not my fault) and I was having issues with Nationwide, who was the other guys insurance company. I tweeted my frustration, and within 24 hours, I had an @ from one of their reps asking me to please email him with the issue. I did and actually got the agent I was having trouble with fired. I’m still in love with Geico, but I do think a little more of Nationwide now because they actually took the initiative to contact me and look into the issue.
Recently I watched AC Moore’s tweet with another follower about an issue she had with their customer service and some supplies she had needed a long time ago. Unfortunatley they weren’t able to get her the supplies BUT they went out of their way to make an attempt, communicate with her publicly in tweets and were very gracious. This bumped up AC Moore’s in my book even though they couldn’t fulfill all the wishes of my fellow follower.
More companies need to follow that trend!
I had great costumer service from Zappos on twitter. They even gave me some sweet VIP stuff! LL Bean on the other hand only responded with a phone number when I asked for help on a return.
I have had some great customer service experiences on Twitter. Once, I was asking what other people thought about Ecover dishwasher tabs, and @EcoverUS got in touch with me and offered me a free box. Win! And on another occasion I mentioned I was waiting for my local auto club to come fix my flat tire and the auto club @BCAA got in touch with me directly via Twitter. Both interactions impressed me immensely.
But I have also had very negative experiences on Twitter, largely with smaller businesses. More than a few small businesses have done the follow / un-follow / re-follow / re-un-follow game with me. So. Unprofessional. I like to support local small businesses, and when they follow me on Twitter I will follow them back and try to engage. When they start playing these games, though, I am left with a bad taste and I feel disinclined to EVER buy from them. It’s highly disappointing.
I completely agree. You need to be responsive to customer complaints. The feedback is definitely valuable.
Having instant feedback can be helpful and hurtful. You have the chance to be accessibile to your customers but if you are unresponsive and don't act upon it, it can be very bad from a public relations standpoint.
I think it is important to have access to your customers. Used properly social networking site like this can provide great insight as to what you do good and what you can improve upon from a business standpoint.
What Twitter does right is amazing. What they do wrong, not reinvesting in itself feverishly, hurts their bottom line. If they came out of the gate running and hurdling vs. overloading and crashing they coulds be leaps and bounds ahead.
It would never have crossed my mind to contact customer service through twitter. This is all good info. I know I see a few follows for me for companies and I know they are hoping for a return follow which they won't get. I'm always bummed when I can't even find a website for a local company. Get with the times
LOL
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Twitter services are good for customer but some company are not give perfect information to customer so sometime customer don’t like it.