Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2016 08:50:04 -0400
From: Billie Hinton
Subject: About Century Link and getting customer service
We too have Century Link for our internet. For a number of years we used Blast and loved them but at some point our signal got weak and we/they couldn’t figure out a location to mount the antenna differently to improve it so we had to switch to Century Link.
We have had reasonably good service with Century Link but periodically the speed gets slow, my husband calls and complains, and things improve. He’s a software architect so knows what he’s talking about – I think that helps. He always ends up on the phone with tech people, not the people you get to in the regular customer service dept. If you’re not getting to the tech people I would try that – it might make some difference.
All this said, I want to share an idea that might work to get some attention to this situation. Recently I had 3 customer service issues with 3 different companies (big ones, none based in NC). I tried the regular route to address the issues – calling their customer service lines and requesting managers/supervisors when the front line staff couldn’t help. This failed miserably. I’ve always had good success getting results this way and it seemed odd to me that suddenly (x3) it didn’t work at all! I did some research online about customer service in general and how to address issues and learned that the new way to get things done is to take the issues to Twitter.
I already had a Twitter account so I used it. I looked up Twitter addresses for the 3 companies and tweeted @ them with a very brief description of my concerns. When Apple didn’t respond in 12 hours I retweeted and added their CEO’s Twitter address to my tweet. Another 12 hours and the issue was resolved and we had a $300 credit applied to sweeten the deal.
Dollar Rental Cars and Hotel Dusit also responded very fast and dealt with the issues to my satisfaction.
No calling and sifting through their telephone trees, no waiting on hold. They called me and emailed me and the people who called were high enough in the chain to make things right, immediately.
I just looked up Century Link and they have national and NC Twitter addresses. If their Twitter feed starts filling with NC customers reporting poor service it might get some attention. The difference between phone calls and Twitter is that on a phone call it’s just you and one customer service rep on the phone. On Twitter, many many people see the tweets and the companies know that so they respond much more quickly. It’s nice once they resolve the issue if you go back and tweet that too.
I’m curious to know if I just got lucky with my 3 tweets or if this method really does work consistently. If you try it, please post here and let us all know if it works!
Billie Hinton