Waving The White Flag on Social Media

By Bo McDonald

Several years ago I was a Charter Cable customer. From day one, the supposed install day it was a relationship many would label on Facebook as “It’s Complicated.” The technician was late, and pretty unprofessional in his appearance and attitude. I thought no big deal. I have to put up with him for 15 minutes while he hooks me up to the service and I’ll never have to see (or smell) him again.

That’s when the real fun began. The first bill we received was more than what we had signed up for. My wife called customer service, received a credit, an apology and a promise that mistake would not happen again. The credit was applied, but each month for the next few months we had issues with our bills. Out of frustration, I took my beef with Charter to Twitter.

Surprisingly within minutes a rep tweeted back at me from the Charter customer service account. I direct messaged my number and not long after that I was on the phone with a customer service rep who handled the issue. I was amazed! How awesome was this kind of service? I tried to fathom the amount of time and resources Charter had budgeted to achieve this kind of customer service on social media.

Unfortunately, the same billing issue happened several more times. I tweeted about it again, and again a Charter customer service rep immediately tweeted back asking how they could help. But the damage had already been done. We ultimately ended up cancelling our Charter service and going with satellite television.

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