The immortal words of my mentor, David Hall. “What else have you tried?” He was referring to some very ridiculous questions I received over social media recently. Most involved people simply being too lazy to find the answer themselves, and that’s fine…so long as you don’t mind getting a lousy response back.

I’m a big believer of providing customer service over social media. If people are reaching out to you over Twitter or Facebook and they’re looking for your help, you should do your best to help them as it’s possible they’ve tried other routes and had no luck (or it’s possible they haven’t tried anything – see title). But for more complicated problems, your customers are doing themselves a disservice by asking you to fix their problem or answer their question over social media since your answers can only be so long and can only reveal so much due to the public nature of social media.

It basically boils down to a form of slacktivism, but you’re doing it in support of something that directly affects you instead of dormant African warlords. You are putting in the minimum amount of effort to get your problem solved and assuming it will take care of itself (or that some Social Media Officer somewhere will). If it’s a problem you care about, you should make it seem like you do. Here’s a few questions to consider before asking questions and demanding customer service over social media:

• Can I get a satisfactory answer in 140 characters or in a Facebook posting?
• Is this information I am comfortable having out in a public setting?
• Could I use this opportunity to have the Social Media Officer put me in touch with the correct individual so I can resolve this issue?

and finally…

• What else have I tried?

Comments are always appreciated!

-PG