Small business PR and marketing

It appears that Telstra has faced a backlash with their Twitter service. They were using Twitter to monitor Twitter feeds for customer issues and then proactively offer support.

Other companies have successfully built customer relations such as Comcast using Twitter, but it seems that Telstra has used it to offer little more than botnet-generated responses directing users to fill out a standard customer service form.

ITnews has reported that a BigPond support staffer, identified as Steven Neville, apologised to the community.

“Upon hearing that we had finally started using Twitter I checked it out and went for an immediate face slap,” Neville wrote.

“Instead of actively engaging customers in a true, helpful dialogue we’ve gone for the ‘Legal’s said this is ok’ bot responses. I can go on, but my disappointment has already been covered by others above.

“I can only hope that we quickly get away from the strict, ’spun by PR / approved by Legals’ approach and truly embrace social media,” he said.