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This is an honest question - why on earth should Twitter be an official support channel for a business? If I had a business, I would respond to Twitter support

This is an honest question - why on earth should Twitter be an official support channel for a business? If I had a business, I would respond to Twitter support requests with “please see our support website for how to contact us” or “thanks, we are now contacting you.” I don’t know why Twitter users should get better support and it seems odd to me to rely on Twitter to provide or to ask for support.

dboreham 8y ago
Because...Millenials?
udwum 8y ago
That's a funny one. I worked at a place where the support team that worked for the social network accounts of the company had better tools and higher priority when doing their jobs than the phone/site support team, so effectively customers asking for support on Twitter or Facebook got better and faster support than customers asking for support on the phone or the site. I assume that's because companies are terrified of bad publicity on social networks.
- maxwell 8y ago
  > bad publicity on social networks Exactly. Social networks moved support from private, hidden systems to a public channel. This benefitted the user, since the brand has more to lose from interactions that are negative, non-responsive, re-directive, etc.
  - danaris 8y ago
    Close. It benefits a subset of users: that subset whose first reaction to having a problem with a company is not to calmly and rationally contact them and see what kind of remedy can be made, but to blast it to the whole world, saying “my supreme pizza had green peppers on it, PizzaBlarg is terrible and should go bankrupt”. You know. Assholes.
1337biz 8y ago
Twitter is sometimes for little Davids the only way to put pressure on Goliaths.
snowwrestler 8y ago
You do customer support via social media for the same reason you do PR and marketing on social media: because that’s where your customers are! People spend a lot of time on social media. Go to your customers if you can. Don’t force them to come to you unless you have to.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> why on earth should Twitter be an official support channel for a business? The same reason you do anything - they’ll take their business elsewhere unless you provide service and support in the way they want it. People don’t like being told to go away and follow some other procedure when they have a problem. Might as well tell them they should avoid having any problems requiring support while you’re at it - that’ll make it even easier for you.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
  This is flawed thinking. Surely you're not proposing to implement every support channel your users might want to use? People are generally happy to use designated channels, as long as it's discoverable, easy to use and effective.
  - pluma 8y ago
    People will call you out on Twitter. You likely have a brand account on Twitter already so you'll already get those mentions. Even if you don't have an account people will create a hashtag. If you want to control your brand perception you don't want the first result when people look for your brand on Twitter to be people tweeting about how terrible you are. The reasons to do support on Twitter have less to do with what's tech support needs and more with marketing and controlling your brand perception.
aestetix 8y ago
Because it's cheaper than having an actual support hotline and easier to ignore than having email. And in the US especially, companies hate having to support users, which is why they are also pushing for AI support instead of actually having a human there. Think about it, when is the last time you had an issue with some Bay Area Saas company and could call them on the phone to get support, like you'd do with a bank?
- philpem 8y ago
  To put it bluntly -- the prevailing mindset is that customer support is a cost-centre. It's hard to reliably measure customer satisfaction, so its value is misunderstood. And if you're the only game in town with your own little walled garden, and everyone in your industry has entirely automated (read: low opex) support, where's the incentive to do better?
  - aestetix 8y ago
    Which is partly because the business model is selling data to large companies and data brokers, not providing a service to the "customers" (users). And then you get places like Facebook that are themselves data brokers, and sell access to the data so they can claim they aren't Acxiom.
voltagex_ 8y ago
Twitter has been the absolute best way for me to get actual support from Australia Post and Telstra* Unfortunately, the Telstra CSAs on Twitter aren't actually allowed to do anything useful so they mostly direct me to other, more useless support channels.
pluma 8y ago
As a consumer, if a company with a Twitter presence responds that way I'll ignore them. Because 9 times out of 10 when I tweet at a brand it's either because I'm calling them out for actively harmful stuff (like using plaintext passwords) or prodding them about issues that likely affect more people than just me. If I have a specific support request about my personal account, I'll go through the usual channels. But if it's on twitter, it's probably there because the extra visibility and public accountability is intentional.
Yizahi 8y ago
I really hate when a company lists "Support Email" address and never replies to it. Dozens of companies did this to me (sent from my gmail). And yet in horrible and unusable twitter or slightly less horrible facebook they reply in hours, or even minutes.
- webmaven 8y ago
  If sent emails were publicly visible (and indexed, searchable, etc.) you can bet that responses to them would be a bit... snappier.

dboreham 8y ago

Because...Millenials?

udwum 8y ago

That's a funny one. I worked at a place where the support team that worked for the social network accounts of the company had better tools and higher priority when doing their jobs than the phone/site support team, so effectively customers asking for support on Twitter or Facebook got better and faster support than customers asking for support on the phone or the site. I assume that's because companies are terrified of bad publicity on social networks.

maxwell 8y ago
> bad publicity on social networks Exactly. Social networks moved support from private, hidden systems to a public channel. This benefitted the user, since the brand has more to lose from interactions that are negative, non-responsive, re-directive, etc.
- danaris 8y ago
  Close. It benefits a subset of users: that subset whose first reaction to having a problem with a company is not to calmly and rationally contact them and see what kind of remedy can be made, but to blast it to the whole world, saying “my supreme pizza had green peppers on it, PizzaBlarg is terrible and should go bankrupt”. You know. Assholes.

1337biz 8y ago

Twitter is sometimes for little Davids the only way to put pressure on Goliaths.

snowwrestler 8y ago

You do customer support via social media for the same reason you do PR and marketing on social media: because that’s where your customers are! People spend a lot of time on social media. Go to your customers if you can. Don’t force them to come to you unless you have to.

chrisseaton 8y ago

> why on earth should Twitter be an official support channel for a business? The same reason you do anything - they’ll take their business elsewhere unless you provide service and support in the way they want it. People don’t like being told to go away and follow some other procedure when they have a problem. Might as well tell them they should avoid having any problems requiring support while you’re at it - that’ll make it even easier for you.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
This is flawed thinking. Surely you're not proposing to implement every support channel your users might want to use? People are generally happy to use designated channels, as long as it's discoverable, easy to use and effective.
- pluma 8y ago
  People will call you out on Twitter. You likely have a brand account on Twitter already so you'll already get those mentions. Even if you don't have an account people will create a hashtag. If you want to control your brand perception you don't want the first result when people look for your brand on Twitter to be people tweeting about how terrible you are. The reasons to do support on Twitter have less to do with what's tech support needs and more with marketing and controlling your brand perception.

aestetix 8y ago

Because it's cheaper than having an actual support hotline and easier to ignore than having email. And in the US especially, companies hate having to support users, which is why they are also pushing for AI support instead of actually having a human there. Think about it, when is the last time you had an issue with some Bay Area Saas company and could call them on the phone to get support, like you'd do with a bank?

philpem 8y ago
To put it bluntly -- the prevailing mindset is that customer support is a cost-centre. It's hard to reliably measure customer satisfaction, so its value is misunderstood. And if you're the only game in town with your own little walled garden, and everyone in your industry has entirely automated (read: low opex) support, where's the incentive to do better?
- aestetix 8y ago
  Which is partly because the business model is selling data to large companies and data brokers, not providing a service to the "customers" (users). And then you get places like Facebook that are themselves data brokers, and sell access to the data so they can claim they aren't Acxiom.

voltagex_ 8y ago

Twitter has been the absolute best way for me to get actual support from Australia Post and Telstra* Unfortunately, the Telstra CSAs on Twitter aren't actually allowed to do anything useful so they mostly direct me to other, more useless support channels.

pluma 8y ago

As a consumer, if a company with a Twitter presence responds that way I'll ignore them. Because 9 times out of 10 when I tweet at a brand it's either because I'm calling them out for actively harmful stuff (like using plaintext passwords) or prodding them about issues that likely affect more people than just me. If I have a specific support request about my personal account, I'll go through the usual channels. But if it's on twitter, it's probably there because the extra visibility and public accountability is intentional.

Yizahi 8y ago

I really hate when a company lists "Support Email" address and never replies to it. Dozens of companies did this to me (sent from my gmail). And yet in horrible and unusable twitter or slightly less horrible facebook they reply in hours, or even minutes.

webmaven 8y ago
If sent emails were publicly visible (and indexed, searchable, etc.) you can bet that responses to them would be a bit... snappier.