Saving you the gory details, I called their customer service department and was basically offered an apology for the “common miscommunication” that would be adversely affecting my credit score. In my head I was thinking, “Common miscommunication? Give me the names and numbers of everyone else who has fallen prey to this common miscommunication and we’ll then have a common class-action lawsuit.” However, I’m not so bold as to say these types of things and in reality I would have no idea how to even begin a lawsuit nor have the money to do so, so I just did what everyone else probably has done and let it go at that…. sort of.

Right after the call ended I did a Twitter search for “bankofamerica” and “bofa”  to see if they had a Twitter account in place. There were several results but nothing looked official so I just decided to #hashtag it:

I actually wasn’t planning on hearing anything from Bank of America considering I was unsuccessful at finding any sort of official Twitter account for them. But I figured, if anything, my friends would chip in their “B of A” horror stories too (which they did) and I’d at least feel comfortable in knowing I’m not alone.

However, to Bank of America’s credit, I did receive a response from their Twitter team (@BofA_Help) only eight minutes after I had sent my original tweet.

Bingo! I still wasn’t convinced that they were going to be able to help me with anything because I had already talked extensively to the previous customer service representative on the phone about what my options were, but I decided to entertain the possibility anyway. I sent them a phone number where I could be reached via DM (direct message) and received a call from them a few hours later.

At the end of the day, they were not able to reverse the problem that had caused me so much frustration in the first place because the first customer service rep I dealt with earlier in the day convinced me I should close the account to prevent further problems. But in order to make amends, the B of A Twitter rep was able to lower my intrest rate, which was something I was told couldn’t be done six months ago when I originally inquired on the account.

Am I completely satisfied with the outcome? Not really. Was I impressed that Bank of America gave someone the power to handle customer service issues on Twitter? Yes.

Towards the end of our call I asked out of curiosity, “So should I be going to you with all of my Bank of America problems since you obviously seem to have more power than the people at the 800 number?” She laughed, “Well, not exactly. You should still try to resolve most of your issues by calling the customer service line. But we will do what we can when we can.”

All I know, is that I’m never calling that 800 number ever again.

]]> http://www.rjmelville.com/socialmedia/social-media-irl-bank-of-america/feed/ 0 http://www.rjmelville.com/socialmedia/twitter-tips-for-business/ http://www.rjmelville.com/socialmedia/twitter-tips-for-business/#comments Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:50:02 +0000 Rachel Melville http://www.rjmelville.com/?p=237 I recently published a three-part series on using Twitter for business for http://videoarmy.tv. It covers several different marketing tactics businesses can implement via Twitter to help promote brand awareness, customer engagement, and content distribution.

Part 1: Interaction, Outreach, and Imitation

Part 2: Social Contests and Exclusive Updates

Part 3: Content Syndication and Brand Monitoring

It’s an area of town I usually try to avoid because of the heavy foot traffic, movie star impersonators and bus tour salesmen. Not to mention, one of the main Hollywood hotels is attached to the complex, so I can only imagine that the majority of club goers at Level 3 are probably not locals. Well, needless to say, the wrap party was at Level 3 and I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Besides, they had rented out the entire place anyway. How bad could it be?

As my boyfriend and I exited the elevator onto the 3rd level of the complex (hence the name “Level 3″), we were looking around to try to find the entrance. In just a few seconds, my boyfriend spotted it and started walking in that direction. When I realized what he had seen and why I had overlooked it, I immediately started laughing. The logo for Level 3 nightclub is the name of the club with a huge, back-lit, Times New Roman-esque, capital “V” as the “v” in “level”. FAIL!

Now, I understand that the word “level” has the letter “v” in it and that it happens to be the center point of the word. However, the designer (or whoever made the call on the logo) completely disregarded the fact that the letter “v” is also the Roman numeral for the number five. Furthermore, not only did they disregard it, but they made it the largest character of the entire logo. In my opinion, that’s a complete design fail. First, because the club’s name contains the number three. Second, because the number three in the club’s name holds significance to the physical location of the club (being on the 3rd floor of a five-floor complex). While entering the club, we also were given complimentary parking validation tickets that were basically Level 3 business cards, so I had even more time to soak up their awesome logo. All I could see was the Roman numeral for five.

Chances are most patrons probably don’t have a problem locating the club, but if it were my decision I would never have approved the logo design. It just comes off as unintelligent (therefore not very classy) and in a way, really lowered my expectations of the place before I had even entered the venue. They already weren’t that high considering the location, but the logo fail was definitely the icing on the cake.