Sunday, March 8, 2009

Customer Dis-Service with Facebook

This is a rant, so I apologize early if I ramble a bit.

Facebook is my nemisis these days. I have a project in which I am supposed to be the Facebook Guru, except that I just signed up on Facebook about 2 months ago, and I'll be damned if I can get a real person to help me. I know, I'm probably old fashioned, but I really, really, really like that personal interaction.

I was in retail during my pre-college days, and I require good customer service. All the time. I am a stickler for it. I refuse to go to Blockbuster any more, because their customer service is the worst. I haven't been to one in over 10 years. I swear. I have a baby, but I refuse to go to Babies 'R Us anymore, because they made me so mad the last time I went there. There are several restaurants of which I LOVE their food, but the service has been so bad on multiple occasions, that I refuse to return. (Note: I do advocate good customer service, too, but my rant today is on the flip side).

So when I needed help with Facebook applications. And I am talking about a lot of help, I did not want to have write a book of all the questions I had in the "forum" just to have to wait for answers individually. In general, I really don't mind asking questions via email or discussion forums for the most part. I do it all the time. But when I need to talk to someone. I really, really need some personal connection. And I don't get paid to sit there and have to filter through all of their "FAQs" or type my question a million different ways, just to get their search feature to figure out what the heck I am trying to do!

So I was working with the Causes people on Facebook, and because I am new, I didn't understand that "Causes" is an application and they are not part of Facebook. I was getting really frustrated that they can't help me get an application onto my Causes page. The good part was that I was talking to a real person at the Causes offices and her customer service was AWESOME! (Thanks Sarah!).

But back to Facebook, I need a human voice. Except that at Facebook, it seems is the except to the rule. Facebook is #1 on the Social Media Scorecard and they don't care that they don't have ANY customer service. 750 employees and not a single human voice to talk to. YUCK! I'm stuck.

Now for some personal advertising... Check out my awesome Causes page and join the cause! (www.causes.com/flamingoagogo)

1 comment:

Sara M said...

I agree, I like good customer service, too. Though social media has opened so many doors communication-wise, I do miss talking to an actual person. I think I'm linking bad customer service and computer people here, but it seems the better you are with computers, the worse your people skills are. Let's just say I talked on the phone with someone regarding an Internet problem...