02647: Social Media Customer Service


So I recently had an odd issue with my iflix account where it showed that I didn't have an active subscription when I should have been fully paid up until March 2019. I first filled out the customer support form within the website but not content I eventually tweeted their social media team about the issue.

In the end it was the Twitter team that responded to me first and managed to resolve my issue well before someone replied to my email ticket. I've ended up similarly relying on BPI's Twitter account for assistance with various concerns, especially when I'm unable to get through to their telephone hotline, which seems like all the time these days.

Now I know that my customer service experience with the social media accounts of various companiews may not be consistent with everyone else's, especially when it comes to more problematic services like mobile phone service providers and the like. But on the whole I have found that local companies have been doing  a pretty decent job of utilising social channels in an effective manner for resolving customer service issues.

To be fair, it does take a lot of patience as a lot of times you'll find that they're applying the same process flows of their telephone support agents to their social media workflow, resulting in some less than ideal methods for identify verification and the like. But with some degree of patience, you may find that social media support is the better way to go.

One caveat is that I generally have better luck with Twitter versus using direct chat services like Facebook Messenger. I guess it's more to do with the brand experiments with using chatbots for customer support, which are often clunky and harder to navigate than some telephone IVR systems I've had experience with. Again, this is mainly limited to my experience. But it is something worth looking into as more and more we move away from voice support channels and focus on more digitally appropriate channels such as email, chat, and social media.

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