. . . in the distant, early morning . . .

Businesses using Twitter

The other day I tweeted something about Citibank having made it harder to pay off my credit card, with a witty comment about them attempting to collect more interest.

Today I was picking up some food when I saw the first mention from @askciti.

AskCiti @lisajill Sorry to hear ur having problems paying off ur card. I’d be glad to see if I can help. Plz DM me ur contact info (no acct#/PINs).

My response?

lisajill @AskCiti Are you serious?  That was the least professional correspondence I’ve ever received.

Where to begin?  I understand that Twitter limits messages to a 140 characters, instilling a need for brevity; however, I would much rather receive no response than the response that AskCiti proffered. 

1.  “ur” is not a word.
2.  “plz” is not a word, and it’s not even an appropriate abbreviation since the full word is “Please”.  No “z”.
3.  Of course I’m not going to send them my account number or PINs.  I’m not a moron.

Citibank failed in their response, then, on a number of levels.  The first level was that I did not want a response. I didn’t ask for help - I was sending out a rant to the twitter-verse.  If I wanted help, I would have gone through the appropriate Citibank support channels.

The second level was not using real English.  Their message would be akin to me walking into a branch and receiving a greeting along the lines of, “Yo, bro.  How’s it hangin’?  Whatchya need, dudette?”  What would I do then? I’d flee the building.

The third level was treating me like an idiot.

Could Citibank have avoided this whole mess and still offered help over Twitter, even if not appropriate?  Sure:

@lisajill is there any way that I can assist you?  Please send a direct message or call Citibank directly. 1 800 xxx xxxx

Professional, informative, and friendly, with 19 characters to spare.

I have been with Citibank since before I was born (thanks mom and dad!) which is pretty serious customer loyalty.  If I was a new customer, I’d be seriously considering canceling my Citibank account purely based on the lack of professional language.  I’m not going to cancel my account, but it sure did bring that to the forefront.  Communication is extremely important: banking is usually a conservative industry and quite frankly, I like banking to remain conservative. 

Corresponding with me in that type of slang makes me wonder why I’m entrusting Citibank with my money.

Now, the final tweet was:

AskCiti @lisajill I just saw the response your received. I am really sorry about that. Is their anything I can do to help?

Seeing “their” instead of “there” just makes you wonder what kind of people they have on the front-lines of their online presence and really reinforces the poor language skills that those folks have. Not to mention “your” when he meant “you” clearly exemplifies a lack of attention to detail and proof-reading ability.  At least he apologized, though I strongly doubt that this person actually understood why I was peeved.

Here’s what it comes down to: 140 characters is not enough for support.  I think that expecting support in such a medium is ridiculous, and offering support in such a medium is equally ridiculous, with both sides setting themselves up for a frustrating and disappointing experience. Once in a rare while I will answer an ExpressionEngine question over Twitter and it takes all of 5 minutes to regret that, as invariably it turns out that an easy question turns into a complex question that needed several paragraphs of back and forth to even understand the problem.

It’s important, then, for both customers and businesses to understand and accept the limitations of Twitter and not have such high, unrealistic expectations for expansive dialogue in a medium that does not allow for it.

... because when you make yourself look like a fool, you lose trust.  When you lose trust, you lose customers.  Is Twitter really worth that?

No.

-Lisa, on May 21, 2010 at 3:11 pm

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