Twitter Support Paradox
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Twitter may change the way companies think about the way they support their customers, but when it comes to Twitter themselves, not only do they not use their own platform to give quick and personal answers, but they are far far behind from what the service could really offer.
I'm sure that by now, hundreds of companies are using Twitter accounts to enhance their client support. Nothing wrong with that of course. On the contrary, if companies are using Twitter, it's probably because they want to give their costumer a quicker way to say what's on their mind. And in most cases these companies will answer to anything you have to say, whether it's a question, feedback or whatever. This kind of accessible communication has a historical influence on the web, and it's all enabled because of Twitter, so how come their support is so unsocial?
I understand, Twitter is a big company and I assume they gets lots of emails per day. But I would expect them to at least have some people to answers the emails. Twitter ignored my emails more than once. Even when I had the biggest problem ever, no one was there to help me.
Right now when you send an email to Twitter, you get an auto-massage that says: it may be 5-7 business days before you receive a replay. Well, I sent my email on Feb 18, still no answer... I'm still optimistic though. But based on these people complaints, I shouldn't be.
You also get this very harsh warning in the auto-message from twitter support:
PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT MULTIPLE REQUESTS FOR THE SAME ISSUE. DUPLICATE REQUESTS WILL BE DELETED AND YOUR ORIGINAL REQUEST WILL BE PUSHED TO THE END OF THE QUEUE.
My good friend Allen Stern said the other day:
Here's the rest of our conversation about this issue:
I totally agree with what Allen said. And being involved strongly in the web for the last 5 years, I know for sure that this is a wrong approach to handle costumers today. This shouldn't happen in this web era, not when Twitter teaching us how to communicate better.
Twitter may change the way companies think about the way they support their customers, but when it comes to Twitter themselves, not only do they not use their own platform to give quick and personal answers, but they are far far behind from what the service could really offer.I'm sure that by now, hundreds of companies are using Twitter accounts to enhance their client support. Nothing wrong with that of course. On the contrary, if companies are using Twitter, it's probably because they want to give their costumer a quicker way to say what's on their mind. And in most cases these companies will answer to anything you have to say, whether it's a question, feedback or whatever. This kind of accessible communication has a historical influence on the web, and it's all enabled because of Twitter, so how come their support is so unsocial?
I understand, Twitter is a big company and I assume they gets lots of emails per day. But I would expect them to at least have some people to answers the emails. Twitter ignored my emails more than once. Even when I had the biggest problem ever, no one was there to help me.
Right now when you send an email to Twitter, you get an auto-massage that says: it may be 5-7 business days before you receive a replay. Well, I sent my email on Feb 18, still no answer... I'm still optimistic though. But based on these people complaints, I shouldn't be.
You also get this very harsh warning in the auto-message from twitter support:
PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT MULTIPLE REQUESTS FOR THE SAME ISSUE. DUPLICATE REQUESTS WILL BE DELETED AND YOUR ORIGINAL REQUEST WILL BE PUSHED TO THE END OF THE QUEUE.
My good friend Allen Stern said the other day:
Here's the rest of our conversation about this issue:
I totally agree with what Allen said. And being involved strongly in the web for the last 5 years, I know for sure that this is a wrong approach to handle costumers today. This shouldn't happen in this web era, not when Twitter teaching us how to communicate better.
7 Comments:
Twitter really should be practicing what they preach. Or at least telling us why they're so slow at getting back to people.
Someone once said that technology today provides all mankind needs. Now it is busy creating new needs.
If that thing is not working and its creator doesn't care about you, why should you keep using it and spend all this time and energy writing about it?
Unless, that's what you do for a living... hmmmmm
I totally agree with you Orli. I had the same experience and I guess I'm a little lucky than you are because it took about a week for them to respond to mine.
That other message about not to resend or else it would go to the end of the queue discouraged me for lodging another support request.
I think with all their funding and exposure they're getting, they really need to update their support.
Not to dismiss the important points you bring up here (emphasizing support, using Twitter as a means of customer relations), but have you tried posting to GetSatisfaction, where the company does appear to be active? The great thing about that site is that, even when the official representatives aren't involved, the community will respond.
Isn't Yammer supposed to be THE "Twitter" for business?
I love when people complain about a free service, that wasn't even at fault (at least with your earlier issue). Get a life! Who uses Twitter for private stuff anyway?
Twitter is indeed an interesting new tool, I guess it remains to be seen how important it will be, most people are still getting to grips with how to use it. However, this point about support is key. My company is stuck with two accounts. The first we simply cannot delete, people are following it but we cannot access it to close it down as we can't recall the password/mail combo the person adding it used. We have mailed Twitter "support" 5 times over a 6 month period and have had nothing but automated responses answering questions they must feel we want answered . They generally tell us to access the account then close it down. We reply "we cannot access it, please read our mails!!". They then started to reply giving us advice about closing down a different account which has nothing to do with us. The madness is I have no doubt a human being from Twitter could sort this out on the phone (or even via E mail) in five minutes but because their support is so shocking, having been deskilled to a degree where there is literally no human interaction, we seem to have reached an impasse. The automated advice is of no use nor relevance, the humans (I presume there are some somewhere)either can't be bothered or have no time. Either way not good enough for a successful company such as Twitter. So, we now have 2 company twitter accounts, one in our name which we cannot use and a second with the number 1 after it.
A similar Kafkaesque absurdity exists with Skype ("It's important to stay together") which although it is evangelical about us all talking on the telephone doesn't do telephone support..
Keep up the great blog, yours, wearily, sighing, chin resting on hands, elbows on desk, Charlie
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