Still on Hold? Twitter Can Rescue You From Customer Service Line Waits

July 22, 2008 — -- You know the drill. Dial the phone number for the company you are hoping will solve your problem -- cable, phone, Internet, credit card rates. The list is endless.

You want a real live human so you have to figure out how to get past the recorded uninterested voice that says: "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish" -- while you start pressing 0 in an attempt to bypass the phone tree and get to someone who has the ability to solve your problem.

Millions of people call customer service every day, yet few are satisfied with the responses they get. What does a frustrated consumer need to do to get prompt help?

Tweet.

That's right, tweet. Twitter is the newest social networking Internet site that asks its 50,000 users only one question when they log on: "What are you doing? The trick is to respond in 140 characters or less, which keeps posts short and pithy.

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When Tracey Lee Wallace logged on one Monday morning she was venting her frustration because her Comcast service was down -- no phone, no cable, no Internet, and she was dead in the water.

Wallace is a single mother who runs a Web design business and often works out of her home so she can tailor her activities around her children's schedule. When her 11-year-old son needed to stay home from school because he was sick she thought she could work from home.

Alas, her Comcast services were all out. "It was an extremely frustrating day. I called and worked my way through the phone jungle, told my story to three different people, was put on hold, then told they couldn't get to me before Thursday."

Frustrated, she logged on to Twitter from her BlackBerry and typed "Damn Internet down in my house. Arrrrrgh. Can't fix until Thursday. Shoot me."

Twitter kicked in. Wallace didn't know that Comcast had a digital detecting unit searching the Internet diligently looking for unhappy customers who needed help. Frank Eliason heads that unit for Comcast and saw her rant. "She clearly needed help. As soon as I saw her post I started tracking her down."