Pulling away from the big Apple, Adobe, iPad/iPhone Flash conversation that has hit just about every read worthy blog of late I want to talk about the interaction benefits of Twitter, and how it is not being used to its full potential.
I use Twitter just as everyone else who has a computer and sees the value in such technologies, I post random stuff, promote my blog, and create a voice for myself on the intertubes. Occasionally I shall rant, mostly at technology and services which fail. One such company in particular is Virgin Media.
When I fist moved into my house, almost a year ago, we found that television reception was very poor, and BT just did not perform when I moved home, I got angry and frustrated, and took it out at BT by taking my custom elsewhere, and opening a Virgin Media account. I get good broadband, 10MB over cable, telephone and TV. Telephone costs are astronomical, and TV frustrates me the most, I have to pay £5 a month for the ability to record, pause and rewind live tv, (you should note that BT Vision service gives you a box which you can do all this on for free). My wife and I dont watch that much tv to justify such expense, but we would like the ability to record. However this post is not about the services Virgin do or do not offer.
More than once I have tweeted my disgust, and each time a representative of Virgin Media have @replied to me asking if I have spoken to the customer services department? Each time I have not, (I am simply waiting for my contract to end, at which time I shall improve my TV arial set up and re-hire BT to offer me their services). I am sure that many regular tweeters have seen the same thing after ranting or mentioning a company in a bad way, twitter seems to be our voice on the internet, but that voice is just an echo.
Is it not about time that voice was responded to in a very real and useful way? Instead of simply directing me to the Virgin Media customer services, how useful would it be for a customer services representative to DM my twitter account to actually help and resolve my issues? Of course there are security issues with this, and some kind of password system may have to be set up, but this can be done when opening an account with the company in the first place. Associate your twitter account with your Virgin Media account?
Should more business and services be using Twitter in this way, or should it be a service purely for the individual? What do you think? What have your experiences been?
Posted On: Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 @ 7:18 pm by Ian Tearle
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