The rise of social media has been interesting to say the least. Many on twitter have found it to give them a type of power as they can voice their complaints directly to a company that has wronged them. Everything from bad customer service, bad prices, minor inconvenience, or even perceived slights that likely never happened as described.
This ability has given rise to social media teams at these companies that are often extensions of the customer support teams that traditionally handle phone and email based contact. Since the complaint isn’t a direct communication between the offended and offender, companies have figured out that it behooves them to control the narrative as much as possible. Since the original Tweet(s) have outlined a bad experience they must try to head off any additional commentary be it from the offended to friends of theirs sharing their own negative experiences or even random users that see a RT or search for those sharing negative stories.
Without fail, the offending company will reply and immediately ask you to take it to direct messages (DMs) to control the narrative. They show they are quick and eager to resolve your issue! After that they only need to provide a base level of customer service and hope that satisfies you. It is interesting to note that they will do this by asking you to send your name and specific information to assist you, even if your complaint isn’t specific to you. Don’t let them do this.
If your complaint is generic and not specific to your account or personal details, don’t go to DMs with them. Have the conversation publicly so everyone can see it and those searching down the road can find it. If you do take it to DMs and they don’t resolve it? Take them to task, again. Keep doing it until they make things right or ignore you like OptumRX did with me. Apparently you can only call them out for dreadful customer service and a web portal written by seven year-olds so many times before they give up trying to get you to go to DMs and away from the public eye.