I ask because Telstra has just started 24/7 Twitter support and finally launched Facebook customer service, too. We can be hard on the telcos (usually rightfully so) but this is good to see. Still, I’d like to hear about your experience.
Below is a quick look at what some of the other big mobile carriers are doing. In my experience at least, I’ve found answers to my problems and had things resolved much quicker than I would doing cartwheels over the phone. What about you?
Telstra: Twitter and Facebook (chat)
Optus: Twitter and Facebook (Mon-Fri, 9am-8pm & Sat 9am-5pm AEST.)
Vodafone: Twitter and Facebook (Mon-Fri 8am-midnight and weekends 9AM-5.30PM AEST.)
3: Twitter and Facebook (Mon-Fri, 8am-4:30pm)
Virgin: Twitter and Facebook (though their Facebook wall doesn’t really show much support conversation, no times listed, either).
MDolley
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:09 PMI used Twitter to get out of my Three contract. I also used it to win my current phone, but not sure if that counts?
Nck
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:18 PMTweeted Optus a number of times, they offer generic responses and seem to know less than I do
eg: Have you turned the phone off/on and can you do a battery pull
Sam
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:24 PMPart of me thinks it’s great that telco’s seem to be attempting to keep up with modern communication trends; but the other part of me thinks that it’s incredibly disappointing that telco’s can offer this service to fanfare. Yes, you can get faster resolutions via these channels than you would “…doing cartwheels over the phone…” but really, if any Telco wanted to – they’d be able to get their call centres fixed so that wait times are minimal, and you don’t spend hours in queues.
Communicating via twitter for these kinds of issues is slow, because you’re effectively micro-queuing for each message you ask; and clumsy, because you don’t have enough characters in each message to really articulate the issues you’re suffering in detail.
I’ve dealt with the Vodafone social media team on twitter quite a few times now; and while I will praise them for being incredibly enthusiastic to help, I’ve come away from it each time thinking that I could have achieved an outcome if I were able to speak with them on the phone for 10 minutes, rather than spend a day or two bouncing @ messages back and forth.
Sam D
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:28 PMI’ve found the Telstra twitter to be very useful in the past. Haven’t had any issues for quite a while so haven’t needed to contact it since.
Sam O
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:29 PMWhile I was overseas I forgot to activate roaming before I left, wasted time and money on calls to Vodafone’s customer support line which got me no where… contacting them on twitter solved the problem in a few hours. I was very happy with their response.
Duragizer
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:51 PMWhat if your internet goes down and that’s the problem?
Steve B
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 5:00 PMwifi / 3G / carrier pigeon
Steve B
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:59 PMI called telstra landline and tweeted @telstra at the same time. @telstra sorted my issue in 15mins, I was on hold / with an idiot who had now idea for 47mins. In the end, he said “oh, looks like it fixed itself, anything else I can do”, yep, you can go jump off a cliff. Their phone operators have 0 knowledge of their products and services. Twitter team is super successful. Love their twitter team.
Samuel of Kadina
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 5:04 PMWhen dealing with Vodafone, their Twitter support team was excellent. One of the very few reason I have a twitter account. They were able to resolve my issue very quickly.
Steve B
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 5:08 PMSame with Auspost, they are not 24/7, but the website had poor tracking and a quick tweet got a reply in 10mins with an exact location on my parcel.
James
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 5:35 PMI used twitter to get an early termination charge refunded when no other means would work – with Vodafone, twitter seemed the only way to contact anyone with the language skills, technical knowledge, and system access to solve anything but the most basic account issue. I’m with Telstra now, and I’ve never had to wait on hold – their call center does work, but only after you’ve called a few times and got through to an onshore or nearshore agent. The offshore agents tell you the problem is resolved, when in fact, it is not.
david
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 6:25 PMI think Telstra over the past 3 years has gone from strength to strength. They offer so much more innovation like this twitter and facebook support.
They have the best network and have the best call centre’s also.
B
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 6:27 PMThe Vodafone support team on Twitter are excellent. Kylie has helped me out quite a few times :)
Steve
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 1:16 AMThe Telstra social media team seem to be fantastic – always resolve any problems I throw at them. They’re also on Whirlpool which is a good thing.
I like the fact they also have a proper request form hosted on BigPond.com so you’re not DM’ing personal info over these services.