MindComet

Get your S**T together Twitter!

Twitter announced on July 23rd that they were purging spam accounts from the platform. Given the recent homepage changes that are intended to position Twitter as a “conversation search engine”, this move makes sense.

However, I fear that legitimate users are getting caught in the crossfire. My friend over at doterati, Tara Lamberson recently found that her Twitter account had been suspended. The suspension date, according to Twitter Grader, happened on July 24th, one day after Twitter’s announcement. She’s not a spammer and, as far as I know, has always used the platform within the stated terms of service. To compound what is an extremely frustrating issue for her, she can’t get anyone at Twitter support to respond to her request concerning the matter—what a surprise.

Frankly, I am getting sick and tired of writing posts about Twitter not acting grown-up. I’m sick of writing about a platform that doesn’t seem to respect it’s users. Twitter, get your shit together. Offer timely support, especially to those users who were shafted by your mass-suspension! Many people have come to depend on your service, especially those who use it in a professional capacity. If the lack of a monetization strategy is the barrier for your attention, how letting me pay for your service? I’d happily give you $10 a month if it meant you’d lend an ear when I had a problem.

By the way Twitter, if you’re listening, reinstate @taralamberson

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Aug. 04, 2009

Facebook privacy directions

I’ve had some requests from friends asking how to prohibit 3rd party applications from accessing your Facebook photos… here they are in screen shot form.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Jul. 24, 2009

Twitter kicks ass…and so does Boingo!

Do any of these statements match your thoughts on Twitter?

* Twitter is a waste of of time
* There is no business value in Twitter
* Customer service is best done with a phone call

If so, this post’s for you!

To set the stage, Mark Krupinski, an avid Twitter user, was at an airport and was attempting to use the service Boingo, a global Wi-Fi provider.

What did Boingo achieve here?

* They saved a relationship with their customer
* They publicly proved their dedication to their customers
* They potentially gained a customer (me)

In a mere 12 minutes they used Twitter for customer service, brand awareness and new customer acquisition via a single interaction. Plus it was all done for a fraction of the cost versus traditional approaches to each of those functions. That can hardly be called a waste of time. In fact, that’s savvy business.

Twitter kicks ass…and so does Boingo!

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Apr. 03, 2009

I got some $&%*#@& help from Twitter support

If you are a regular reader of Social Enchilada, then you’re probably familiar with my troubles with Twitter support.

I’m happy to announce that my troubles are over! MindComet has officially regained control of the Twitter handle @mindcomet. It was a long hard road, with more than a few bumps, but through a persistent and unwavering effort, I did it.

I began our mission in mid-November, 2008 by submitting a ticket into their support queue. By mid-December, I still had not received a response from their team. I even tried mailing them a letter (yes via the USPS), in case the online support queue wasn’t the best way of contacting the support team.  I even reached out directly to Evan Williams and he assured me he’d get it taken care of. No dice.

In mid-January (still no response), tragedy stuck in the form of a Twitter hack, which was attributed to their support queue. They scrapped the old queue, along with my two month old outstanding support request. To make things worse, their post-hack strategy for handling support was a complete mess. Fast-forward to March 23rd through a variety of tactics on my part to attract their attention…Twitter support finally got around to handling and completing my request.

That’s over 4 months that passed for a request that took them, in my estimation, a total of 1 hour to accomplish.

You’re probably getting a sense that I’m completely unhappy with the Twitter support staff, well I’m not. My gripe is with the Twitter leadership team.  By all appearances, they see support as an after-thought and have as a result, kept that department inadequately staffed.

How do I know this? I spent a few years in a technical support capacity, including managing my own team. Taking 4 months to complete a 1 hour ticket is a clear sign of a grossly over-burdened support staff. The fact that there was a ticket open for over a month shows a complete lack of attention from upper-management.

I wholeheartedly believe that by offering support, Twitter entered into an implied contract with it’s users and is obligated to provide them with a reasonable and timely level of support. This notion of support SLA’s (Service Level Agreements) is even more important when Twitter is on the verge of trying to monetize their platform.

Twitter, it’s time to grow up, and start acting like a $250 million dollar company. Providing top-notch service would be a good start.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Mar. 26, 2009

Twitter support, your problems are far and wide

I recently posted about the lack of response from Twitter Support. I am unhappy to say that my issue has not been resolved yet. And as I’ve gone deeper and deeper down the Twitter support hole, I’ve learned just how broken the support department at Twitter actually is.

Most everyone is aware of the Twitter hack that happened earlier this month.  My understanding is that it was due to security flaws in their support queue. Happily they fixed the issue by replacing their support queue with a new system called Zendesk ( they blog about this change at Twitter Blog: The Zen of Twitter Support ) and more recently rolled out Get Satisfaction for support as well.

I applaud the team for making changes in response to a problem, but, in my opinion, they really made a mess of things. Let me explain how.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Jan. 30, 2009

Twitter support, can I get some $&%*#@& help?

Question: If I use a free service, which offers support to it’s users, what can I reasonably expect in terms of customer care? Am I entitled to the same levels of care as a customer of a “pay” service?

Case in point, Twitter. A well-known free service, which offers a support queue. A queue in which I’ve had two tickets for some time now. The first is dated 11/14/08. The second (which really is the same issue, just resubmitted) is dated 12/04/08. Neither ticket has been responded to by their support department. This lack of response is extremely irritating.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Dec. 16, 2008