What is the best way to get your complaint sorted out by a company that is  driving you up the wall? A few years ago the answer might have been a string of  irate phone calls followed by a letter to the company and perhaps to your  favourite newspaper’s consumer agony aunt. But, increasingly, it seems that 140  characters are doing the job of 1,000 words.

Companies as diverse as banks, gym chains, travel agencies and large  retailers are using Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, to resolve  consumer complaints in hours or even minutes rather than the usual days, weeks,  or months.

Twitter has become so widely used for airing grievances that companies such  as BT, Halifax and LA Fitness have Twitter accounts specifically to deal with  customer feedback, separate from their general public-facing accounts. For  example, BT has @BTcare,  First Direct has @firstdirecthelp, Halifax has @AskHalifaxBank and  La Fitness has @LAFitnessUkHelp.

La Fitness set up its account after  an article in the Guardian about the company’s poor customer care caused a storm  of protest on Twitter. Hundreds of people bombarded its US account as well  as a little-used UK account that it had previously used solely to share exercise  and diet tips.

It has since has taken on a new public relations agency and set up two  separate Twitter accounts, @LAFitnessUK_HQ, which it uses to promote itself,  and@LAFitnessUkHelp, which deals directly with people’s complaints. The latter  is now dealing regularly with customer services issues.

Last week a member of the gym chain, Guy Sumner, took to Twitter to complain about the gym’s cancellation policy. He tweeted: “Cancellation policy for @LAfitnessUK_HQ is awful. 15 mins on hold and then it’s a month notice from the 1st day of next month … and they won’t do anything to help even though it’s the 3rd day of the month. Awful customer care.”

Just four minutes later a representative of @LAfitnessUKhelp replied: “Hi Guy — can you DM [direct message] me your membership number? Thanks, Alice.”

The Observer asked Sumner what happened next. “LA Fitness gave me an  email address of someone in their customer services team,” he says. “I emailed  her everything that had happened and why I wanted to leave. She then replied and  cancelled my membership so it now only runs until the end of this month instead  of the end of June. Twitter was very useful as I managed to get it all resolved  in two working days.”

Halifax is another company that uses a separate Twitter username,  @AskHalifaxBank, for customer service issues. Earlier this week, one Twitter  user, Kelly-Anne Smith, tweeted about the bank, saying:

“Good LORD @askhalifaxbank how can 1 company make SUCH a mess of Isa  transfers? I’m on hours of phonecalls, branch visits & still not  sorted.”

Minutes later @AskHalifaxBank responded. It forwarded her details directly to  a member of the customer services team and asked them to contact Smith directly.  It ended by saying: “If we can help with anything in future, feel free to  tweet.”

Halifax hasn’t followed up its tweet so far, says Smith, which she is  disappointed about. But she says she would use Twitter again to complain.

“I complained about Fitness First, who immediately messaged me, got my number  and called to fix the issue straight away. They were great and I tweeted again  to say as much,” she says. “I’ve done it several times and on the whole find it  a much more effective way of getting help. Having always tried normal routes  first but to no avail.”

Despite cut-backs, increasing numbers of companies are employing separate  teams to deal with complaints via Twitter and Facebook. Nationwide building  society now has a dedicated social media team and has  just launched a Facebook page to answer questions and promote its products.  It is set to launch a customer-facing Twitter account in the next couple of  weeks.

“If you have a complaint, at the moment, the best way to contact Nationwide  is through the normal channels,” says Paul Beadle, social media press officer  for the building society. “However, we have realised that those channels need to  be expanded.”

First Direct has been using the account @FirstDirectHelp, for some time. The  bank employs a digital team to monitor it and look after Facebook responses and  queries. Its spokeswoman admits Twitter can be a quicker route to getting a  complaint resolved.

“We aim to respond to a tweet within an hour and whilst it’s difficult to put  a figure on it, at the moment it has definitely improved the time to resolution,  which was already good,” she says.

Most of the companies we spoke to were unwilling to admit publicly that  Twitter can be a quicker way for customers to get complaints resolved. But,  speaking off the record, one banking industry representative was more  candid.

“We find there are two types of Twitter people. Those who use it generally to  talk about everything, who might mention a complaint about our brand in passing.  We would contact them and direct them to the normal complaints channels,” he  says.

“Then you get people who are not happy with a response they have had from us  and believe by shouting about this on Twitter they will get a personal response.  It’s true that Twitter can be a way of escalating complaints in this situation.  It is basically another version of a newspaper’s consumer agony aunt, as on  Twitter that complaint could be seen by thousands of people.”

The threat of bad publicity via social media certainly seems to have  companies on the hop. One reader tells the tale of spending three months trying  to get a refund from a well-known travel company using phone calls, emails and  letters. In the end he contacted the company via an email address for its social  media team.

“I sent them a one-line email stating: ‘No tweets yet. But there will be if  this matter is not resolved immediately’,” he said. “This was sent at 15.30 one  afternoon — by 21.00 the same day I had received a full refund, plus a £100  voucher.”

This article comes from: http://www.psfk.com