“A bad review or negative comment can be retweeted by millions, and companies are often keen to defuse customer anger very quickly in a public space such as Twitter. If it is done cleverly, it can even work in a company’s favor.”
Why it pays to complain via Twitter
By Lucy Wallis
I wanted to cancel my subscription to web-related services provided by a company situated in the USA. If you are to purchase additional services, all you have to do is just tick the boxes on the page titled ‘my account’. But you cannot cancel the services online after that, and you will be advised to call Customer Service, which means, if you are living outside of the USA, you have to make an international call in the English language. They don’t accept ordinary e-mail messages.
If you are in such a predicament, it is a good idea to ask them to do the necessary procedures via Twitter.
I was able to cancel my subscription successfully.
Before I began the process, I had thought of talking to the customer service personnel by telephone. I felt the need to practice speaking in English, so I signed up for the conversation class on LingQ several times. I dialled the number that begins with ‘1-888-’, and the pre-recorded voice I heard was very fast and I could not understand the details. I felt desperate. Then I tweeted the predicament I was facing. The customer service account followed my Twitter account, and I sent a DM; it became unnecessary for me to make an international call.
I wonder whether any company has some numbers about this. Say, one negative tweet = 1% loss of sign-ups or call-ins. Or do such companies just fly by the seat of their pants about negative feedback and really have no idea what they are doing?
Anyway, good on you, Yutaka, for being able to cancel your subscription.
How to complain through social media. http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/24149289
. . .
Try not to complain in anger or use bad language as your complaint is more likely to be deleted or ignored
When tweeting, mention the brand’s Twitter handle in the tweet (a mention) rather than at the very start of it (a reply). This ensures that your tweet is visible to all users
Make sure your complaint is clear and succinct
. . .
Never reveal personal details such as account or reference numbers in a public message
How Twitter RT (Retweets) Work: How to Properly RT Someone on Twitter
By Elise Moreau
“RT @username: If you want to manually Twitter RT another user’s tweet, you can do that by copying the original message and adding “RT @username” in front of it where @username is the particular user’s Twitter handle. Putting “RT @username” in front of the tweet will send a reply (found under the Replies tab) to the user, letting them know that you gave them a RT.”
Will Francis’s second statement on the list is not easy for me to understand. I suppose he is referring to the manual retweet cited above. Or, his advice is simply not to begin your tweet with @someone else’s username, for your message will be considered to be a reply to someone else’s tweet.
P.S.
I wonder if his advice --Will Francis’ second one-- is not to begin with ‘@some company’s account’, which is the one you want to have contact with.
Will Francis’s second advice simply means that if I were to put @XYZ somewhere within the RT, rather than at the beginning, all the world can see my RT (at least all my seven followers) and the originator will also see that I have retweeted, rather than sent it as a reply.
Clearly, explanations about how to tweet etc are more complicated than to do the actual RT-ing, tweeting or replying!
Let’s suppose there are three persons, that is P1, P2, and P3.
P1 and P2 are following each other.
P2 and P3 are following each other.
P1 follows P3, but P3 does not follow P1.
If P1 tweets at P2 like ‘@P2 …’, this message does not appear in P3’s timeline because P3 is not following P1, even though P3 is following P2.
If P1 tweets at P3, this message appears in P2’s timeline because not only P1 but also P2 are following P3.
First scenario looks fine, a message from P1 to P2 does not appear in P3 (but not because P3 is not following P1, but simply because the message is addressed to only P2).
If P1 tweets @P3 (without mentioning @P2), the message appears in P3’s timeline, but not in @P2.
If P1 tweets @P3, with mentioning @P2 somewhere within the tweet, then both P3 and P2 see it in their timeline.
I’ve only been back on Twitter a little while, so its niceties may still be lost on me!
If one of your friends tweets at someone else of your friends, the message is automatically shown also in your timeline because the second friend is followed by both the first friend and you. This is my understanding.
We shall have to test this. I need a threesome: a ‘friend’ who is also a ‘friend’ of one of my ‘friends’ and me.
If your theory were correct, it would mean that - if I can get my son to tweet his wife - I’d be able to read their “private” conversation?
I know that Twitter is not really about privacy for most people, but a little bit of private sphere wouldn’t come amiss, surely? Is this why some people protect their tweets?
I shall publish the outcome of this experiment a little later. Let’s hope my family is supportive of our scientific approach to deciphering the mysteries of Twitter.
Correction:
Let’s suppose there are three persons, that is P1, P2, and P3.
P1 and P2 are following each other.
P2 and P3 are following each other.
P1 follows P3, but P3 does not follow P1.
If P1 tweets at P2 like ‘@P2 …’, this message does not appear in P3’s timeline because P3 is not following P1, even though P3 is following P2.
If P1 tweets at P3, this message appears in P2’s timeline because P2 is following P1 as well as P3.
If one of your friends(P1) tweets at someone else of your friends(P3), the message is automatically shown also in your timeline because you(P2) are following both the first friend(P1) and the second friend(P3).
When Person A, who is a friend and follower of person B and C, writes to Person B, who is also a friend and follower of C & A, Person C who is a friend and follower of A and B will have the message from A to B in his or her own timeline.
I have written ‘friend and follower’ to make it a bit more complicated, in plain Twitter speech they all follow each other (and presumably live happily ever after)…