Telstra Bigpond has been slammed by the blogosphere for “robotic” and “anonymous” interaction on Twitter following the launch of its customer service site on the social networking site.
After becoming the first Australian telco to launch a customer service site last Thursday, Telstra has come under fire from countless bloggers who have dismissed its attempts to engage customers and create a community of technical support as a blatant marketing ploy.
One blogger, Stephen Collins on the Acidlabs blog, described Telstra’s responses as “noncommittal, anonymous, boilerplate text.”
He said: “It’s just the sort of thing that’s anathema to both good customer service and the kind of open, honest, human conversation that is critical in social networks.”
At the time of publishing, the majority of the posts on Telstra’s page sounded very similar, saying: “Hi there @hdenley! If you flick us an email via http://bit.ly/1nWHMo with your tech issues we’ll be more than happy to help out!”
Bloggers’ are also enraged at the fact they are redirected to a customer help page which them prompts them to submit an online form.
“Telstra is twittering, but it reads like a bot. Don’t they know anything about the social web?”, said blogger Alister Cameron on his Blogologist site.
Using Twitter, Telstra can communicate with customers in two ways. It can post updates, in no more than 140 characters, to its Twitter page, or can track and “follow” customers who have mentioned any of its products in their posts. The fact that Telstra sends out messages before being contacted first has seen it accused of violating the Spam Act, which prohibits sending out commercial electronic messages without the consent of the addressee.
However a corporate response posted by Mike Hickinbotham from Telstra stated it upholds the Act and only communicates with those who have responded favourably to their introductory message.
A spokesperson for Telstra Bigpond, Peter Habib, said: “Our aim is to provide genuine, one-to-one customer assistance by reaching out to those who have twittered about us.”
Telstra responded to the attacks by outlining improvements to the Twitter service, including “only following people that have selected to follow us.” Other improvements, which will be rolled out next week, include making the tone of communications more conversation and making its profile format easier to engage with.
