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Customer Service Twitter Style

albelli customer serviceLast night my wife was trying to upload some photos to albelli.co.uk to generate a hardcopy album. She  wanted to take advantage  an offer from the Daily Telegraph that ran out at midnight.

The uploading did take some time but I guess the albelli servers were busy because of the promo deadline. Fair  enough. Shortly after 11pm she tried to complete the order but the discount that came with the offer no longer seemed to apply. One unhappy wife pulled the plug on the deal.

I tweeted this and had a response from a follower who had the same problem. It looks as if the set up on the server had the offer timing out at 11pm instead of midnight. Not good but mistakes do happen.

This morning I got a response from @albelli_UK with apologies for the problem and asking for more details.  By 9.40am they had sorted it out and my wife is now very happy with their service.

This is a great example of how Twitter can be used as a customer service tool.  Albelli has turned the situation from having negative PR to positive one and won over a customer. Note they will still have to offer a competitively priced service – my wife can very easily find out what the competition is up to on the wild wild web 🙂

PS yes this is the same telegraph that was hit by a DNS hack last night – as far as I can see the problem is still there at 11am on Monday morning.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

6 replies on “Customer Service Twitter Style”

Daily fail running similar offer. hardback album of photos just for cost of postage. If only folk had the upload they could do it in seconds. Many will have to do it overnight.

Absolutely agree – businesses need to be tuned in to social media to ensure they’re quick to pick up on issues.

I’ve had similar experiences with several big name companies – likewise I’ve had those who have completely ignored my tweets. I’m sure you can guess the ones I recommend to my friends!

I wish I could have tweeted mobile operator 3 (Three) last night after having gone through three offshore people who clearly should not have been left to talk to me let alone a normal member of our society. The most shocking customer service I’ve ever endured in my lifetime which at the age of 49 is quite a bit.

They even had the cheek to tell me that my Apple iPad 2 was in fact a Samsung Apple iPad not the Apple iPad which they also support.

Twitter is the most powerful of all the social network outlets because it’s immediate and reaches such a wide audience and it’s certainly great to see companies not only utilise it for their own PR/message but respond to messages tweeted from within it.

I’m glad you managed to get your deal sorted out. I didn’t. I completed the order within the time-scale and the website wouldn’t accept the discount. Having spent ages uploading the photographs, I completed the order and sent Albelli an e-mail requesting refund of the overcharge. I have screen-dump evidence of the process (the screen shows the failure to accept the code) with time display on the bottom, and of course my order confirmation shows I was within the T&C deadline. So far they have refused to refund the £15.95 on the grounds that they don’t offer ‘retrospective discounts’. I have pointed out that I’m not requesting a retrospective discount, but a refund of an overcharge. So far, no response.
Customer service… I don’t think so.

Whew hooray:)

I had mean’t to respond to your earlier comment. The answer I think is not to do things on the quiet via email. When things are done in very visible ways as is the case on Twitter it is in the best interest of a business to respond asap in as positive manner as possible. Most businesses are populated with real people who have genuine motives anyway and want to help. Those that aren’t are less likely to stay the pace.

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