After writing about Frank Eliason who is the ComcastCares guy at Twitter, I started looking at other customer service attempts on Twitter. I think Twitter is an ideal venue for companies to get closer with customers and helping customers with problems on Twitter seems to me to have great potential.
I also am a longterm user and supporter of Firefox (FF). In fact, my first interview for Naked Conversations was with the Firefox founders.
These two factoids converged after I downloaded FF 3.0 for Macintosh shortly after it was made available. While overall I'm happy with it, there is one very annoying glitch. Whenever I'm in GMail and click on a link, I get a virtually blank screen except for a menu bar that states: "Firefox prevented this page from auto redirecting to another page." I then have to click an "Allow" button. I've fiddled with all the settings and I just cannot make a direct, one-step connect.
Try saying that in 140 characters on Twitter. I dare you. But we'll get to that.
Repairing my FF glitch is not mission critical to my life or even my Internet usage. But it does add an unwanted step. Considering I go from GMail to the Internet a good many times every day, it can grate more than it should.
So, when I discovered @Firefox_Answers on Twitter, I was pleased. Firefox had come into a neighborhood where I hang out and it seemed to be offering someone to help people like me. Unfortunately, I find myself more frustrated with the customer service person than I am with the Firefox glitch.
If you look at ComcastCares, you see a photo of Frank Eliason. You see his email. The full account title include "by Frank." It did not start like that, but by listening to Twitterville and to his own customers, Eliason has evolved. He has email there. He answers almost everyone promptly, seven days a week. He demonstrates a credible passion for helping people.
You would think that service operations following the ComcastCares lead would study what he does then try to equal or surpass it. This does not appear to be the case with firefox_answers. There is no identifiable human. You don't even get to know whether you are dealing with one human or many. The avatar depicts--I think--the shadow of a cartoon fox. Nearly 1000 people follow Firefox_answers, I imagine many are people like me with problems.
When Frank Eliason talks with a customer who has a vexing problem, he calls them up and talks to them. He asks them to call him when the Comcast repair truck shows up. He becomes part of the solution and people are talking about it.
Here's what happened with firefox_answers. I am going to use the "she" pronoun, because it's my guess that the firefox_answers person is a young woman with some tech knowledge and about zero understanding of Twitterville where she works and represents her company. I also assume that she knows nearly nothing about customer service, which is what she is employed to provide.
Here's my play-by-play.
- I tweet, saying as best I can what my problem is.
- 24 hours pass. She tweets back asking a question.
- I answer as best I can within 140 character limit
- 21 hours pass. She tweets back with a more complex question.
- I tweet saying that I need a few paragraphs to describe it. I post my email for her to contact me. There is no email post on her account
- Two days of silence. No response
- I tweet, asking her where she went.
- She replies saying that she went away because it "sounded creepy" when I asked her to email me.
- I reply saying that I am easy to check out on Twitter & I'm not creepy. I just want to fix a problem.
- "Check you out," she writes back, "Now you sound REALLY creepy."
I quit. I may start using Safari more. I think less of Firefox. If they are going to improve their customer service, they need to do more than throw bodies at it. They need to understand that a customer with a problem is a problem for their reputation. They need to understand that Twitter is--among other things-- where people help people.
Advice to companies. Twitter is an incredible place for inexpensively providing personal service. You should check it out. Take a look at how Comcast is doing it right. Then look at Firefox_Answers for how to do it wrong.
