I recently ordered a new smartphone from Virgin Mobile, which I was quite excited about. My excitement dwindled over the couple of weeks it’s taken so far, and it’s still not here. There is, however, a silver lining to every cloud.
I’d made five or so calls to the delightfully unhelpful offshore call center, endeavoring to find out what the problem was, exactly. Each was equally unhelpful, and yesterday I was about to call it quits on Virgin for good. Serendipitously, I noticed Virgin Mobile Australia have an active presence on twitter, and gave that a whirl. Well, I’ve yet to receive my phone, but a helpful tweet assured me that it had now been followed up and sent.
I find two things amazing about this customer service over twitter. Firstly, I’m amazed that the company is willing to invest in a twitter presence, given their apparent lack of care (or understanding) of how bad their telephone support is. Secondly, I’m amazed at the satisfaction twitter provides as a customer service medium. The response was nowhere near instant, given I posted out of regular business hours, but it was clear, concise and reassuring.
I tend think customer service over twitter is going to get much, much bigger in the coming year or two. Post a comment if you have had a customer service experience on twitter, I’d be very interested to hear.
The creators of Twitter had no idea what they unleashed. But this is true of a lot of web applications. Customers will find new, unforeseen uses for the products companies release.
For another case of customer service innovation on Twitter, check out what Comcast is doing. Few companies have a worse reputation than the cable company but they are getting accolades for their work on Twitter.
Thanks Allan, I’ll check out Comcast!
Twitter works wonders for customers wishing to receive service quickly. Often they will respond with a prompt and short answer which post of the time is exactly what you need.