Social Media Backlash – Poor Customer Service from Years ago, Now They are on Twitter?

By Matt Dunlap on October 7th, 2009

Tweet Tags: customer service

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about social media strategies for businesses. A popular topic when talking about social media is customer service. The way the public can syndicate information through social networks can make or break a company based on their customer service. I also feel that customer service, marketing and PR departments have merged into on when it comes to providing help to your customers via Twitter, facebook, or company website.

Providing good customer service to make happy customers tell their friends is nothing new. What is new is the way that companies can now use tools like Twitter to basically say “Everyone, look how we provide good customer service” Seems a little like PR to me, but that’s social media. These tactics can go either way. If the community thinks you are playing one over them, they will retaliate and let other know what you are up to.

This got me thinking…

How do you feel when you see a company that you had a bad customer service relationship with in the past, jump onto Twitter to basically broadcast their new social media strategies?

I was thinking about bestbuy and their tweelpforce, and comcast cares. I’m pretty sure there are people that got poor customer service from them in the past. I saw a question on linkedin about someone that tried to communicate with comcast via email and got no response. When he complained on Twitter they responded immediately… I feel that is because they want to broadcast it to the public.

About 4 years ago, I was frauded for $2,000 from a seller on bid4assets.com. I tried and tried to get a hold of someone at that website to ask for help, with absolutely no response. Today, when I was thinking about this post, I wondered if they have a twitter account. They don’t… and good thing.

Personally, I would be furious if I saw a company that treated me so poorly in the past now using social media to show the world how they know how to use web 2.0 and social tools. Even if they have completely new management and culture, I would still be pissed and it would take a lot to win me over as a return customer. I’ve never used bid4assets.com again, an never will.

One thing to note about bestbuys twelpforce. I cannot find anything about the twelpforce on bestbuys website. The front page has nothing, and so does their customer service section? I thought they were doing a huge push for it?