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

Even for someone like me who spends way more time then they’d like to admit playing (and working) on Facebook, they’re constantly updating, upgrading, rearranging and changing things around. So unless you’re glued to social media news, knowing how and where to access some of Facebook’s more advanced features can be a little tricky.

Read the original post at VideoArmy.tv