Perhaps this is not the best way to get customer service help.
Because of my role at Sprint, I deal with a lot of customer service issues and I’m happy to do so. Almost always, customers find my name, email and phone number on the Internet and they seek me out first before ever contacting customer service or they come to me when they feel they aren’t getting the help from customer service that they deserve. Often they are coming to me as a last resort.
For the most part, the customer I hear from are reasonable — even the angry ones. They understand that I work in media relations and that other than asking a team member from Customer Care to review their account, there’s little I can do. But they’re frustrated and sometimes they take it out on me.
If you’re tempted to contact a company’s PR representative for a customer service issue, before you do so, consider these tips:
- Don’t yell at, threaten or curse at the spokesperson you’re calling. It won’t generate the outcome you’re looking for and you’re better than that.
- Recognize that the company’s privacy rules or Federal privacy laws likely limit what a PR person can do to help you. At Sprint, to protect the privacy of our customers, I’m not allowed to have access to any customer’s account information. So all I really can do for our customers is to get them routed to the proper group within our Customer Care team.
- Recognize that PR people are hired to work with journalists who are on deadline. This morning, I missed three calls from reporters because I was managing a customer service issue. This is why, if you’re going to contact a PR person for customer service, you have to be quick. The longer you take in making your request, the more frustrated you’re going to make that PR person. (My performance reviews don’t hinge on how I help customers resolve issues, but rather how I deal with media.)
- Don’t threaten to call the media. To a person, the reporters I work with are extremely skeptical when a disgruntled customer contacts them. Their job is to report facts, not help you resolve a dispute with your car dealership, airline, government agency or your cell phone company. When you threaten to call the media, that pretty much ensures an outcome that you won’t like.
- Don’t misrepresent who you are. If you’re going to go the route of contacting a company’s spokesperson, tell the truth. By all means, don’t invoke the name of your employer unless you’re calling on behalf of your company. To do so really reflects poorly on you and your employer.
- Don’t be one of those social media complainers. Yes, I realize that this blog post is my complaint of sorts, but hear me out. If you follow me on Twitter or some other social network and I’ve secured help for you via @Sprintcare or some other social media care channel, give us a chance to resolve your issue before you continue to vent. I personally have lost all patience for the drama-seeking self-proclaimed social media gurus who want to school a company on how to manage customer service. Don’t pull a Kevin Smith.
- Be reasonable. The companies you and I do business with aren’t under any obligation to do everything we demand, but they should be reasonable. Most companies I do business with understand that it’s easier to keep me as customer than it is to go out and find a new customer to replace me. That said, companies also are learning when it’s in their interest to end their relationship with you. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the customer is not always right.
- Do say thank you. Since I’ve joined Twitter, I’ve helped hundreds of Sprint customers get their customer service issues resolved. You’d be surprised at how few people who use social media to get Sprint’s attention to fix an issue ever use it to say thank you once the issue is resolved. Do what your parents taught you. Say thank you.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
As I mentioned to you earlier today on Twitter, I have no idea why people would contact a PR person with customer service issues. That is not only annoying, but it is ridiculous.
However, I have a particular problem with Point #6 in your post. I agree with the first part of it. If a company is looking into correcting an issue, the complainer should most definitely give the company a reasonable amount of time without bitching or complaining on social media. The second part of your statement, though, is what I disagree with. Did you not say you’re sick of people trying to tell companies how to do business?
It’s one thing for a utility company to treat paying customers like crap. Where else are you going to get electricity? But phone companies, cable companies, etc. seem to lose track of the fact that paying customers are contracting that company for business. The company can be fired at any time (with a termination penalty). So brushing aside customer complaints or issues or problems as “social media gurus who want to school a company on how to manage customer service” is exactly why many people, myself included, can’t stand Sprint or companies that follow this line of thinking.
-Dale
@normalguyguide
Hey Dale — It sounds like we just posted our comments on one another’s blogs within minutes of each other. A little background is probably in order so you can understand my point of view.
When I first joined Twitter (and really dove into social media generally) my purpose was to connect with journalists that I otherwise wouldn’t meet. Twitter in particular has become a fantastic site for doing just that. Along the way, I’ve helped literally hundreds of Sprint customers, who like you, felt that they weren’t getting the attention they deserved from our Care team. Social media is helpful for that, in my view. Thats why our customer care team at Sprint set up @Sprintcare. What I like about that is it takes me out the customer service business and lets me focus on my job — media relations.
That said, I’ve seen more than my share self-styled social media experts want to put a social media gun to the heads of businesses across the Web. From where I sit, I don’t like it. The example I cited — Kevin Smith’s atrocious behavior with Southwest — is as good as any of that phenomenon. Because Smith has 1.7 million followers on Twitter he can (and did, in the case of Southwest) immediately air any grievance with any company he does business with and it has consequences for those companies.
I’m also thinking of the social media marketing people on Twitter who are trying to sell books or seminars. Twitter is filled with these folks and they wield considerable sway. I won’t say his name, but I remember one instance where one of these gentleman, with 75,000 followers, spent most of the morning trashing Sprint on Twitter and saying that Sprint was ignoring him and didn’t understand how to do customer service in the age of social media. Throughout all those tweets, I sent him 10 tweets offering him my personal help. The first one was since within 5 mins of his initial complaint.
Eventually, 6 hours later, this gentleman sifted through the Twitter clutter to realize that someone from Sprint was trying to help him. He stopped his criticism of us and we were able to get him to a care rep, but he never once acknowledged to those 75,000 that Sprint, did indeed know how to help customers via Twitter. That’s the kind of behavior I’m fed up with.
But does that mean that I’m opposed to disgruntled customers using social media to get the attention of customer service? Or course not. I do that in this space from time to time myself. And from what I can tell in your situation with Sprint, you gave our care team plenty of time to explain our policies and why they couldn’t be bent on your behalf. At the end of the day, we lost you as a customer and I’m certainly sorry about that, but I absolutely have no problem with you using a blog or social media to air your concerns.
But for the sake of discussion, let’s roll the tape back a bit and assume you are a Sprint customer and you were following me on Twitter and we had had quite a bit of engagement on various issues. You tweet to me about the latest Sprint phones; I tweet to you about social media and school in San Marcos. Then, I see you start complaining about Sprint on Twitter. From where I sit, I’m wondering why you don’t just contact me directly. So then I reach out to you and offer to connect you with customer care.
Customer care then takes care of your issue and you’re a happy customer again. You may even tweet about it. Then 6 months go by and you have a billing issue. So you go to Twitter again. And I wonder again, “Why isn’t he coming to me directly?” And then I offer to get Care to help you and then they do and you later tweet your appreciation.
That’s happened quite a bit with me over the last 2 years. And often, these people never call our 800 number or visit a retail store. While it’s great that these types of customers are eventually getting help, when you look at the business costs of managing customer service via social media, I’m betting that it’s much more cost effective for a company to manage care through traditional channels like an 800 number than through social media. That said, big consumer brands can’t afford to ignore social media. My view is that we’re not quite set up to provide the instant response that many in social media sometimes expect.
From a cost point of view, there’s not a business case which supports doing so. But there certainly is a business case to at least have a small presence in various social media channels to respond to customer concerns. It’s smart marketing and it allows companies to monitor customer sentiment in a channel. But it will be a long time before traditional customer care channels are replaced with ones in social media.
Hope that clears things up. Again, I’m sorry that we couldn’t keep you, but given your perspective and point of view, I understand why you left. Perhaps Verizon will be more flexible than Sprint when you present them with a similar request. For your sake, I hope so.
Thanks,
John
I believe your post answered my problem. I assumed you were using “social media gurus” as a sarcastic term for Twitter users, or at least people on Twitter with a limited social impact, much like myself. I now see you were using it in a more literal sense, meaning the people with wide, wide reachability. My mistake.
I agree with your position of Twitter-bullying, if you want to call it that. I have friends in the range of 25k-30k followers who pressure companies into giving them stuff out of fear that they say something bad about them. That has always happened on some level in traditional media – I’ve seen it first hand. But I guess social media allow that power to be put in the hands of anyone with a pulpit, not just “journalists.”
Anyway, it’s a good discussion and I apologize for coming across as a douchebag earlier today. I’m really not. As I mentioned, I have a raw nerve concerning Sprint that I will eventually get rid of.
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