I admit – I am not a technical person. In fact, you could almost call me a “luddite,” which is a really fancy way of saying I’m a techno-phobe. I didn’t get a smartphone until last year, and to be honest, this whole “Internet of Things” (IoT) really unsettles me.
With that said, I do enjoy using various tools out there to see what others are thinking or to find a solution to my problem.
Around 3 weeks ago, I received a call at 11 o’clock at night from a gentleman in another state. Being that it was late in the evening, I let the call go to my voicemail. Much to my surprise, the caller left a message explaining how my landline phone was calling him late at night and that it needed to stop.
I immediately called this person back to explain that I wasn’t calling them intentionally and that I would get in touch with the phone company to get to the bottom of it.
My first thought was “grrreat, another to-do item for tomorrow.” I’ll have to call Vonage, try and navigate some automated system, and in all likelihood, sit on hold for at least 10 minutes.
When I sat down at my desk the next morning, I visited the Vonage site to see how to get in touch with them. While looking around though, I spotted a link to the company’s Twitter page explaining how customers could go there for tech support.
I sent a tweet to @Vonage_Voice explaining how my number was calling this person without my knowledge. I would have included a hashtag #needsleep but didn’t have room.
Within a few minutes, the representative asked me to follow Vonage and send them a direct message (private) with the phone numbers in question. I did as he asked and within 20-30 minutes, Vonage replied with an explanation of the problem.
(The strange thing: their records didn’t show my number calling this person at all, which led us to conclude that someone was “spoofing” my number)
In any event, the representative told me to contact the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to report the issue. Although I haven’t done that, I also haven’t heard back from the poor guy whose phone was ringing off the hook, so I assume he’s not getting the calls anymore.
No, I wanted to tell this story so others could see a real live example of how Twitter can be useful for helping customers with technical issues. Using the tool was nice since I was able to post a quick tweet, work on other things, and then come back. Not having to take 10-15 minutes to navigate some automated system then sit on hold was a big relief.
It will be interesting to see how this interactive technical support will develop. In the meantime, if you’re having some sort of technical issue, check and see if the company is active on Twitter and takes requests.
If you decide to jump on your Twitter to try and resolve a technical issue or complaint, this piece from PC World provides a few tips.
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