In this article, Manjoo Farhad discusses the increasing use of Twitter and other websites to file complaints against different companies. Bob Garfield, founder of comcastmusdie.com, which later became Customer-Circus.com, declared "war" against Comcast after a mess with customer service. After he made this website, Comcast quickly responded to his complaint and to many other dissatisfied customers that posted concerns on this website. Comcast now has a "team [set up] to respond quickly to online grumbling." There is a similar example of this with Heather Armstrong, who complained about a Maytag washing machine she was having problems with. After tweeting, "DON'T EVER BUY A MAYTAG," a company executive hastily sent her the parts necessary to fix her washing machine. A competing company even sent her a new washing machine. Both these examples happened after long exchanges with customer service. So what exactly makes a tweet so much more powerful than a phone call? It is the ability to communicate a message to the masses, but it also may help that both these examples involve highly influential internet figures. This success doesn't necessarily translate to a regular consumer. The chance of being noticed by a company increases with the amount of "followers" one has.
I remember working at a call center the summer of my ninth grade year. I didn't work in customer service, but sometimes I would need to take customer service calls. When this happened, oftentimes, there wasn't much I could do to help the customer because it involved something much higher than me. This article is good because it shows that people are getting helped by filing complaints on different websites. It is quite similar to a call center in some ways, though, because for the regular person who doesn't have many "friends or followers," it probably doesn't make a difference if they post something online. It may influence some friends, but unless their complaint reaches a large market then the company won't really take much concern. This article also concerns me, however, because most people don't even think to post complaints on a website. Does this mean that eventually people who don't use the internet won't get served? Is this the beginning of the end for customer service by phone and the beginning of it by internet? Companies like Comcast and Maytag will answer complaints on line, but other companies like United Airlines and Directv don't answer complaints, even from people with a lot of internet influence. This shows that there is still a way to go till customer service is all online, if it ever will be, but it is a possibility that someday it will be. And right now, maybe it is a good think that both people can use both mediums to get help and answers from companies.
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