http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2004096,00.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMSctvnW154

She actually thinks consumers will clue-in and that poor customer service will eventually damage companies.

her slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/carsonified/tara-hunt-your-social-media-strategy-wont-save-you

One can only hope that since people like her are presenting to marketers, and people like you are blogging about it, that maybe it will make a little difference in how some companies will do service.

And, this all reminds me that we have to be careful not to replicate these same mistakes when our libraries use social media. Fortunately, we’re usually all about good service to begin with!

Yes, I have heard that for some companies if you threaten you are going to blog or tweet about the bad service, suddenly, you get excellent service, refunds or whathaveyou (works only for fairly high ranking managers, most drones don’t care)….

You bring up a interesting point. Many libraries are running twitter accounts, and some like me are actively scanning for comments about the library and intervening when necessary http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-libraries-should-proactively-scan.html .

I don’t think people running the twitter acc have any particular authority to treat users going through the twitter acc better, or at least I don’t. If the policy says no, complaining on twitter isn’t going to change things (though it might get a explanation of why things are the way they are).

I try to provide good service through Twitter, but it’s no better than what I would provide through email, face to face, IM or what have you.

That said, there is an element where you can use twitter as a service recovery tool, but that’s only because there has being a service lapse, not because people complaining through twitter get special attention compared to those going through other channels.

Perhaps an alternative to make a screencast is http://screenr.com/ If you covert the recording then to AVI via http://www.zamzar.com/ and upload them on moniemaker, you could make a great screencast. It is just a suggestion. The best of luck!

Grz Wilma (The Netherlands)

After they stopped responding to my emails about a missing refund, I did some googling and noticed that anytime someone complained about this company on a messageboard (and there are a LOT of complaints out there) that a designated rep (the same guy every time or at least the same user name) would create an account and promise to solve the issue. He never gave an email address, just invited the unhappy customer to use that messageboard’s direct messaging system. So I created a thread on the one hobby-related messageboard that I frequent and bam, there he was within 24 hours, with my refund showing up soon afterward.

What an utterly bizarre way to run a business.