@purplelara Hi, I’m with the RogersHelps team. We try to assist customers online.  Is there something I can help with? ^mm

Obviously, given the length of my posts below, being succinct isn’t one of my strong suits, so I wasn’t entirely sure how to reply in under 140 characters, so I directed her back to my blog.  In the meantime, she (^mm is apparently their rep, Miranda) followed me on Twitter so we could DM each other and sent this message:

@purplelara Can you DM the # associated with your account? I’d like to try and help. ^mm

I DM’d my account number and e-care order number and received another message:

@purplelara Thanks for the info. I’m looking into this for you. ^mm

Now this is very interesting. In all the (lengthy) email correspondence I had with Rogers, they repeatedly told me  Twitter was not an acceptable means of communicating with them – and I tried to make clear to them how misguided I thought that was.

And yet, the quickest, most helpful communication I’ve had from Rogers in the last month or so was via Twitter.

It appears that Rogers does in fact monitor their Twitter activity and has a team in place to follow up on tweets from frustrated customers – a quick look at the @RogersHelps Twitter page shows the majority of their tweets are directed to other Twitter users who mention Rogers.

Encouraging.  Somewhat.  I had been tweeting about Rogers for a few days before I heard from them, but in their defense (I’m not trying to be unfair here), I mentioned the @RogersWireless account and not @RogersHelps. In my defense, I had no idea the @RogersHelps account existed.  I searched for RogersWireless in Twitter and assumed @RogersWireless was a main Rogers Twitter presence, but it seems I was wrong.

So, while I applaud Rogers for having a team monitoring Twitter and addressing customers through that medium, I’ll remain critical of their commitment to new ways to connect with their customers until they actually make  their Twitter presence known to their customers AND their own customer service reps.

Nowhere on Rogers.com (that I could find, and again, if it’s not accessible, it’s not effective) is there any mention that “RogersHelps” customers on Twitter. Searching “Rogers Twitter” on Google won’t find it for you, and their very own customer service reps not only are unaware of it, they actively discouraged me from using Twitter as a means to communicate with them, telling me “we are not allowed to visit Face book [sic] and Twitter while we are at work.”

So, is Twitter an effective way to communicate with businesses?  Miranda forwarded my concerns (whether she tracked down my emails or simply forwarded the contents of my tweets and blog link, I’m not sure) to someone in the office of the President of Rogers Wireless, who called me tonight.

The story is not over yet, but I have now spoken to a live human being who had all my information at hand, who promised to call me back and (get this) GAVE ME HIS DIRECT LINE.

Hopefully I’ll be able to write the end of this story tomorrow. In the meantime, thank you Miranda.

This is in relation to e-care order #XXXXXXXXX.

Since your system won’t let me post a long comment, please see this blog post, which I have also posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks!

www.purplelara.com/2009/09/17/iphone-love-rogers-loathe/

Today I received the following email from Rogers:

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, we appreciate your use of online customer service. In your recent email, you have informed us that you have left comments on Face book [sic] and Twitter.

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to visit Face book [sic] and Twitter while we are at work. We would kindly advise you to reply to this email if you are having problems with our company.

This is my reply:

Thank you for your email. Yesterday when I used your Contact Us system I found it did not allow me to post a lengthy comment, and I had a lengthy tale to tell about the problems (plural) I have had with Rogers Wireless’ customer service.

I provided you a link to my blog, which is neither Facebook nor Twitter, and noted that I had ALSO posted the information to Facebook and Twitter.

Unsurprisingly, you seem to have missed the link entirely and missed a crucial word in my original message. That word is “also”. Here is the non-Facebook non-Twitter link again:

www.purplelara.com

At that link you will find a post called “iPhone = Love / Rogers = Loathe” which fully details my experience with your company.

The reference to Facebook and Twitter were simply to alert you to the fact that I am letting my friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter know about my experience with Rogers Wireless. I’ll be updating my site now with this further example of the wonderful customer service experience Rogers offers.

By the way, you may wish to let your web team know that it is extremely un-user friendly (and an example of bad design, bad coding and bad testing) to have your system completely bomb when a user submits a comment over the allowable length. The end result for your users (clients) is a complete loss of their (obviously long) comment, which is likely to frustrate them further. Some other options you may wish to consider are limiting the user from imputing characters over the limit in the first place, or providing a message which reads something along the lines of “Field is limited to XXX characters. Please edit your comments and re-submit” rather than allowing the overflow input and then bombing when the user attempts to submit the comment. Some routine testing could have found this defect.

Thanks for your time.

Keep up the good work guys.