Ask HN: How do you feel about Twitter DMs for customer support?

1 points by rubiquity 11y ago ↗ HN

For some reason I've been having awful product issues lately. My first resort is to send emails to the company but when they don't get back to me I eventually reach out on Twitter. From there it's the same old song and dance. They require me to follow them (I don't want to and immediately unfollow afterwards) and then we cram all the details of my issue into 140 character DMs where we can't send each other hyperlinks (due to Twitter's weird thing that hyperlinks in DMs == spam).

I guess I'm just wondering how other people feel about this. It feels like lazy customer support where my experience is being compromised.

2 comments

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wmf 11y ago ↗

Twitter is a terrible way to provide support, but it works for shaming companies into providing support. Ideally you would only use Twitter for the initial shaming and then you'd switch over to some Web/email system for the actual support.

rubiquity 11y ago ↗

Thanks. That's what I always assumed would happen but was surprised when it didn't. The companies that I've done this with are large, too. Think Telcos, energy companies, big retailers.