by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
A couple of months ago I stopped by my local pharmacy (which is part of a national chain) and got my annual flu shot. I guess it must have been a slow day on Twitter, because sometime later in the morning I mentioned in a tweet that I had gotten a flu shot that day - and encouraged others to do the same. I also mentioned the name of the pharmacy where I had gotten the shot. Thirty minutes later I had a tweet from the company's home office saying that they were glad that I had chosen to get my flu shot at their store.
The company's home office had an individual sitting at a computer monitoring social media accounts and looking for mentions of their corporation!
Not long after that I got into a disagreement with my internet provider after my internet service went down for a period of two weeks. I tried dealing with the company through telephone conversations which only served to acquaint me with some some very nice people in several south Asian countries who could provide no actual help whatsoever, as well as several "supervisors" in the United States who were hellbent on selling me a new modem. Eventually, I took another approach and was able to get the issue resolved without buying anything.
After wasting countless hours on the telephone as well as time in the McDonald's parking lot using that company's free wifi to chat with my internet service provider over its website, I finally decided to try contacting the company through Twitter where they would be forced to listen to my succinct complaints without interruption and hopefully give straightforward answers without reframing or equivocation.
And it worked.
After posting my complaints publicly on Twitter, the company immediately connected me with someone who had the power to resolve my issues - and soon I was back on-line without buying a new modem - and the company cheerfully deducted the time that my service had been down from the next bill. It was so much easier than riding their telephone merry-go-round, and so much more productive!
This week I heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) about a medical doctor who was having trouble dealing with an insurance company over bills related to his own child's medical treatment. It was a convoluted situation that took a long time to fix. The doctor's wife told the reporter who was taping the story that the situation was finally resolved when the doctor began using Twitter to deal with the insurance company. She said that her husband was not a "Twitter super-star" and that he had only around a hundred followers - but that was enough. It got the insurance company's attention and the company suddenly developed an interest in taking care of the situation.
.
Twitter and most other social media outlets not only put a user in contact with the giant and impersonal corporations, but those accounts also alert others of the situations and serve as sources of publicity - good or bad - for the businesses involved. And, it looks as though most big corporations have individuals on their payrolls whose job it is to constantly monitor social media accounts and look for references to their companies.
A phone call will set a consumer to pushing numbers and listening to recorded messages for hours-on-end, but a tweet gets heard in the throne room! And a tweet has the potential of becoming visible to most of the world.
One of my relatives put it this way:
It's quick, it's effective, and it brings down the thunder!
Citizen Journalist
A couple of months ago I stopped by my local pharmacy (which is part of a national chain) and got my annual flu shot. I guess it must have been a slow day on Twitter, because sometime later in the morning I mentioned in a tweet that I had gotten a flu shot that day - and encouraged others to do the same. I also mentioned the name of the pharmacy where I had gotten the shot. Thirty minutes later I had a tweet from the company's home office saying that they were glad that I had chosen to get my flu shot at their store.
The company's home office had an individual sitting at a computer monitoring social media accounts and looking for mentions of their corporation!
Not long after that I got into a disagreement with my internet provider after my internet service went down for a period of two weeks. I tried dealing with the company through telephone conversations which only served to acquaint me with some some very nice people in several south Asian countries who could provide no actual help whatsoever, as well as several "supervisors" in the United States who were hellbent on selling me a new modem. Eventually, I took another approach and was able to get the issue resolved without buying anything.
After wasting countless hours on the telephone as well as time in the McDonald's parking lot using that company's free wifi to chat with my internet service provider over its website, I finally decided to try contacting the company through Twitter where they would be forced to listen to my succinct complaints without interruption and hopefully give straightforward answers without reframing or equivocation.
And it worked.
After posting my complaints publicly on Twitter, the company immediately connected me with someone who had the power to resolve my issues - and soon I was back on-line without buying a new modem - and the company cheerfully deducted the time that my service had been down from the next bill. It was so much easier than riding their telephone merry-go-round, and so much more productive!
This week I heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) about a medical doctor who was having trouble dealing with an insurance company over bills related to his own child's medical treatment. It was a convoluted situation that took a long time to fix. The doctor's wife told the reporter who was taping the story that the situation was finally resolved when the doctor began using Twitter to deal with the insurance company. She said that her husband was not a "Twitter super-star" and that he had only around a hundred followers - but that was enough. It got the insurance company's attention and the company suddenly developed an interest in taking care of the situation.
.
Twitter and most other social media outlets not only put a user in contact with the giant and impersonal corporations, but those accounts also alert others of the situations and serve as sources of publicity - good or bad - for the businesses involved. And, it looks as though most big corporations have individuals on their payrolls whose job it is to constantly monitor social media accounts and look for references to their companies.
A phone call will set a consumer to pushing numbers and listening to recorded messages for hours-on-end, but a tweet gets heard in the throne room! And a tweet has the potential of becoming visible to most of the world.
One of my relatives put it this way:
"That's probably the best way to deal with any big company these days . . . degrading them on the urinal wall that is the internet."
It's quick, it's effective, and it brings down the thunder!
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