The call centre experience is commonly a poor one for customers. Companies are seemingly reluctant to additionally or alternatively utilise email effectively to increase customer satisfaction in resolving queries. Rather they are quick to 'jump on the bandwagon' and offer an alternative response path via twitter. Whatever the communication mechanism there is no point doing something unless you are prepared to invest in it and try and do it well. This means the company needs, the degree dependent on it's nature, to cater for both one way and two way communication between itself and it's customers. Further it is the latter which is key in delivering customer satisfaction.
Some do this badly, e.g. @CardiffCouncil either ignore incoming tweets or say they are passing them on to 'the correct department' and then nothing ever happens. They have taken the easy option and just pump out the same old tweets in rotation, whether this be about rubbish collection, council meetings or bike security. Admittedly this is a council/ public sector so I have very low expectations from the start.
Some do respond to customer tweets but badly. Two recent examples: @Nook_customercare chose to answer a completely different question from the one I asked(!) and I'm still waiting for a resolution to a query raised with @TMobileUK after 5 days and one chasing tweet. In the latter case this is particularly bad as my query is about a roaming issue and I am currently not in my native UK making the call centre communication path considerably more problematic! I live in hope - it's about four hours before I go off wifi for the remainder of my holiday. Chances? I should note that they did deal with a previous query effectively in the past so 1 from 2. I would also note that if the informational resources around their service and the service itself were better in the first place there would be less need for customer support!
Fortunately some get it right and restore your faith in twitter/ humanity. AJ from @AskNationwide corrected the damage done to the organisation's reputation by a particularly poor call centre experience by proactively dealing with my urgent query. It's a shame the service received via Twitter isn't always as good.
So today's winner is @AskNationwide. Round of applause please. The rest ... please do better.
UPDATE: TMobile told me they had made the necessary config changes on 10/8. Unfortunately I was back in the UK by then and could not test! Hopefully all will work next time I'm abroad.