Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Leveraging Consumer Created Content
On occasion, I have experienced
difficulty communicating with a business. One stinging example that occurred this
past year was when I had a problem communicating with a company with which
I did business. It was a tech company that sold a particular kind of firewall
that I had purchased for my company’s co-location facility. I had paid several thousand dollars for
support and then had problems getting the configuration to work properly. I called
the company and was put on-hold for over forty minutes. While I was waiting, I
went to the company’s web site to see if I could submit a ticket on-line. There
was no functionality to do that. They did not have obvious links to their
knowledge base nor a customer’s discussion board. Social media would have helped me to find out
if other people had experienced similar issues and how to resolve the problems
I was tackling. Personally, I am especially appreciative of those sites with
live chat feeds in addition to customer discussion boards and searchable
technical articles.
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Hi Robin,
ReplyDeleteSounds like that was a frustrating experience! How did you get it solved? Next time I have difficulty with a business, I'm going to try using social media to help me, but I wonder how effctive it will be!
Hi Melissa. The problem got resolved with the help of the vendor's tech support over the phone. I am just accustomed to having more tools at my disposal for "self support". I think customer bulletin boards and knowledge base repositories are usually excellent places to find information.
DeleteRegards,
Robin
I also really appreciate live online help. I think social media doesn't give you that sense of direct communication--at least initially. You post something and hope it will generate some response, but you don't know. Whereas with a real conversation, you know exactly how it turned out.
ReplyDeleteCharlie. Sometimes the immediacy of feedback is not a requirement. For me, I take comfort in just knowing that I dumped my issue on a board and someone will eventually respond. Take, for example a FaceBook conversation I had over the course of the day with a friend. She made a post; later in the day, I responded. Then she posted again, commenting on my response and again I was compelled to make another comment. It just goes that way without timing being an issue.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that we cannot do with out "real" conversations. There are times when the immediacy of one-on-one conversation is quite definitely a requirement.
Thank you for your thoughts on this issue.
Sincerely,
Robin
I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one up at four in the morning yesterday LoL
ReplyDeleteOn another note: I agree that finding some sort of discussion board usually always answers my questions. That or google search. I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience.
I agree with the following quote below of yours because most companies if they could afford it in this horrible economy should go to a live chat service for customers and here is your quote I agree with:
ReplyDelete"Personally, I am especially appreciative of those sites with live chat feeds in addition to customer discussion boards and searchable technical articles".
I like your take on this! Sometimes using social media has helped me (like you said) to find answers in other users when the company itself falls short.
ReplyDelete