rogers helps?

Imagine my surprise this morning when I checked Twitter saw a tweet directed to me from @RogersHelps:

@purplelara Hi, I’m with the RogersHelps team. We try to assist customers online.  Is there something I can help with? ^mm

Obviously, given the length of my posts below, being succinct isn’t one of my strong suits, so I wasn’t entirely sure how to reply in under 140 characters, so I directed her back to my blog.  In the meantime, she (^mm is apparently their rep, Miranda) followed me on Twitter so we could DM each other and sent this message:

@purplelara Can you DM the # associated with your account? I’d like to try and help. ^mm

I DM’d my account number and e-care order number and received another message:

@purplelara Thanks for the info. I’m looking into this for you. ^mm

Now this is very interesting. In all the (lengthy) email correspondence I had with Rogers, they repeatedly told me  Twitter was not an acceptable means of communicating with them – and I tried to make clear to them how misguided I think that is.

And yet, the quickest, most helpful communication I’ve had from Rogers in the last month or so was via Twitter.

It appears that Rogers does in fact monitor their Twitter activity and has a team in place to follow up on tweets from frustrated customers – a quick look at their the @RogersHelps Twitter page shows the majority of their tweets are directed to other Twitter users who have mentioned Rogers.

Encouraging.  Somewhat.  I had been tweeting about Rogers for a few days before I heard from them, but in their defense (I’m not trying to be unfair here), I mentioned the @RogersWireless account and not @RogersHelps. In my defense, I had no idea the @RogersHelps account existed.  I searched for RogersWireless in Twitter and assumed @RogersWireless a main Rogers Twitter presence, but it seems I was wrong.

So, while I applaud Rogers for having a team monitoring Twitter and addressing customers through that medium, I’ll remain critical of their of their commitment to new ways to connect with their customers until they actually make  their Twitter presence known to their customers AND their own customer service reps.

Nowhere on Rogers.com (that I could find, and again, if it’s not accessible, it’s not effective) is there any mention that “RogersHelps” customers on Twitter. Searching “Rogers Twitter” on Google won’t find it for you, and their very own customer service reps not only seem unaware of it, they actively discouraged me from using Twitter as a means to contact them, telling me “we are not allowed to visit Face book [sic] and Twitter while we are at work.”

So, is Twitter an effective way to communicate with businesses?  Miranda forwarded my concerns (whether she tracked down my emails or simply forwarded the contents of my tweets and blog link, I’m not sure) to someone in the office of the President of Rogers Wireless, who called me tonight.

The story is not over yet, but I have now spoken to a live human being who had all my information at hand, who promised to call be back and (get this) GAVE ME HIS DIRECT LINE.

Hopefully I’ll be able to write the end of this story tomorrow. In the meantime, thank you Miranda.