Devotion to Duty

Devotion to Duty:

Twitter and Customer Service

It seems more and more the case lately that if you want some help with a company, complain about it on Twitter. Why?

Because Twitter is so public, when you complain about a product or company EVERYBODY sees it. In comparison when you call tech support and get a douchebag that doesn't all you can do is complain to your mates. However on twitter, when you complain, the company is forced to react and react quickly.

One time at work we had major dramas getting support for Telstra Bigpond who were unable to give us any information regarding why a connection was down. Four seperate help desk people advised that it would be live in a few hours. But nothing. However soon after compaining about it on Twitter did bigpond contact us with a full report and our case escalated to a priority. The line this time was promptly fixed. And all communication was public and conducted over Twitter (minus account information of course).

Another example, read below as the blogger Jason explains his experience with DELL.

Another example is of the comedian Kevin Smith when he was ejected from a plane because of an apparent "Safety Issue" soon reported the issue over twitter and he was soon apologised to. (Read the full story here and be sure to check out his podcast.)

So note in future, if you want prompt attention from a company, make it public with Twitter,

After posting
a couple years back about a bad customer service story with Dell, I felt it was
important to also write about a good experience I’ve recently had. Blogs are
often criticised for simply being a platform to complain, I’d like to disprove
that theory now.

Around a year and a half ago I purchased 2x 27” monitors. Recently I’d
noticed one of them began flickering. This was more pronounced with a white, or
light application background. Using different connections didn’t help, dropping
back to a single input didn’t help, neither did grabbing the latest drivers from
Nvidia.

Out of options I needed support. Dell support. Using the power of social
networking I posted the following tweet.

To which I received the following
response.

I sent off the service tag, my name and email address. A couple of hours
later I received a call from Dell support. I ran him through the situation, a
couple of minutes later, he said, “we’re going to replace it”. 3 days later I
had my replacement monitor. I place the broken monitor back in the box, and send
it back to Dell, all shipping paid for.

It’s been one of my most pleasant experiences with customer service I’ve ever
had. Does this mean that they’ll get it right 100% of the time ? No of course
not, what it does show, is that Dell are paying attention to what customers are
saying. One of the best examples of a business using social media to help their
customers. If you have a problem with a Dell product, consider using twitter. "

Google Buzz is released

Kind of out of nowhere Google has release its answer (more or less) to Friendfeed or Twitter as it seems.

Embedded into Gmail, Google Buzz allows user to post status updates, follow friends, post links and pictures, and more all from within the Gmail interface. This is slowly being deployed out to Gmail users and I received my invited today.

When intially setting up the feature, you are asked to link various sites including twitter, Blogger blogs, and more. Once that's done, it tries to be smart and find anyone in your contact list who you can follow. However with my contact list it found people that don't even use Gmail (therefore not having access to Buzz) and asking me to follow them. Not sure how useful this move would be.

Then in the same window, it listed people that are apparently already following me. There was one random Asian dude who I had never met bet before already following me. Thanks mate.

Once setup was completed I had a great list of posts from Felicia Day and myself which had been mirrored from my Twitter feed. I made a quick post:

My first "Buzz" entry. Kinda annoyed there is another place on the web for Status Updates.

and then thought to myself "Now what?"

Overall I felt somewhat unimpressed by this new addition as out of the box offers nothing new that other services that I am currently joined to don't already offer.

So Gmail users, get ready for yet another place to post status updates.

To check out my Buzz feed, go to: http://www.google.com/profiles/burrowes and click on the Buzz tab.