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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

> How did anyone ever think this was a viable customer service solution?

It was pretty great actually, I got far better service from airlines via Twitter (RIP) than I did by phone. It was a pretty well-known approach.

They do provide some support through Facebook via Messenger, but it was never as popular. TikTok isn't a great medium for this kind of thing but if it helps them reach their customers, why not?

[edit] > ...and at some point you're going to need to share personal info so you're going to need to funnel people to your actual platform anyway!

Not in my experience, they just moved to DMs.

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> I got far better service from airlines via Twitter (RIP) than I did by phone

That's the problem, not the solution. Why the hell was this the case? I guess because it was public.

Either way it sucks. Obviously (good) CS should be via a private channel.

Customer service issues generally get escalated when someone starts advocating against your company, as there is now a tangible cost involved in not fixing the issue. Companies saw people hurting their reputation on twitter and wanted to be able to respond to prevent and minimize damage. It makes sense that if someone complains publicly, you would want to respond publicly, at least initially.

Initial contact would be public. Followup would be private. Much easier, not needing to create yet another account on some CS site, and a much better app experience via DM on Twitter.

> Either way it sucks.

Nah, it was great. Lots of people really liked it.

Keep in mind, it generally wasn't the only option for support, but an option you could choose.

> Nah, it was great. Lots of people really liked it.

That's great! Except now it's gone and you've spent years conditioning all of your users to complain publicly about any issues instead of using your customer support service, and you've just lost the ability to send replies. Is that a bug? Who knows! You can't fix it either way.

Says who? Dozens or hundreds or thousands of people putting pressure on a company to act right when they screw over a customer is good, actually.

Problem is then company is going to only act if they are HN front page or enough people tweet and put pressure then it is not a viable solution for most of us without the social media connections to make that happen.

Also forcing people to use a social media platform to raise a support ticket for something completely unrelated to media or even tech is not a good thing. Not every user of a product (say a kitchen appliance) is going to even know how to use social media

Good for us, that's for sure, but the companies may see things differently.

> Obviously (good) CS should be via a private channel

Exactly the opposite. The interaction being public keeps companies (a bit more) accountable and that can do wonders.

CS is like publicity; in the modern era you need to reach lots of channels, because your customers may not prefer to dial a phone.

The companies are all hostile towards customers finding out how to privately contact them in order to cut their customer support.

That trend started before the trend of smartphones/texting/mobile.

Or you can also take the Google approach and minimize and obfuscate channels for support communication.

> It was pretty great actually, I got far better service from airlines via Twitter (RIP) than I did by phone.

Oh, I totally believe it, and that is exactly my point. X offering the best-in-class UX for customer service is great for users but (in my opinion) an egregious failure for the companies affected.

Companies are choosing to operate a critical portion of their business using somebody else's infrastructure with no contractual obligations! X is not responsible for architecting their platform to suit a service they do not offer and that nobody pays for.

> Not in my experience, they just moved to DMs.

I'm horrified but unsurprised that people are willing to share their personal info such as trip itineraries (hopefully not credit card info) with X. I am surprised (still horrified) companies choose this too.

To be clear, I am not a Musk apologist. I will never have an X account, and that's yet another issue with the current system. I can now expect to be treated as a second class citizen to airlines unless I opt to share my details with Musk.

> I'm horrified but unsurprised that people are willing to share their personal info such as trip itineraries (hopefully not credit card info) with X

Some will even share these things with the whole world!

In a lot countries outside the US this kind of customer support happens on Whatsapp.

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