Sep 3, 2008 1:38 pm US/Eastern
A New & Improved Way To File Complaints Online
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
It's happened to just about all of us. You need help from a company; you call their main number and get lost in a maze of automated phone messages, often giving up before you get the answer you need. But some savvy consumers are taking a different route to get help. They're going online, but not to the company's Web site.
Shawn Collins waited for months for his cable company to install his new phone lines. "I called them probably about four times or so just asking them to come out and take care of it," he explained.
They never came. Frustrated, Shawn reached out to them through their account on a social networking site. "I posted a message on there. In an hour, I got a response from the cable provider," he said.
The cable company had an employee logged onto
Twitter, a site where users post thoughts, questions and complaints for the world to see. Not only did he get an almost instant response online, but the company called him and an hour-and-a-half later, the doorbell rang. "It was one of their technicians who actually came to my house," he said.
"This is the way you do business in the 21st century," explained Lance Ulanoff of
PC Magazine.
Many companies have their own pages on
Myspace and
Facebook where customers can communicate in a less formal way than through the company's own Web site. Others actually patrol the social sites, chatrooms and blogs and jump in when they see discussions about their companies. "If you see somebody in a blog or in a forum talking trash about your company or being very angry because there was a problem, you can engage them right there and try to help," Ulanoff said.
This is not new to Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines. "We monitor more than 100 travel and airline industry blogs a day," she said. "We are also very active on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook."
Berg says she wants to know what's being said about the company and for the most part, the response has been positive.
According to Ulanoff, companies are motivated to resolve gripes because what's posted online often stays online whether it's positive or negative.
Shawn went from being a disgruntled customer to praising his cable provider. "I became all of a sudden this raving fan," he said.
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