Reporting a member of staff via Twitter - would you?

[Mintona]

I've praised a member of FGW staff via twitter, but would never complain about anyone. Far too public.

 

[12CSVT]

I have to agree with you on this. Twitter, Facebook, etc, makes it very easy for people to make some nasty complaints without thinking about it or simmering down. EG Somebody misses a train, claims platform staff stopped her getting on it when she could have done, makes false accusations etc etc, that then results in an investigation into platform staff. The company finds out that nothing was wrong, and just ****ed some money down the drain in the process, the passenger doesn't care about whether she missed her train, she was just a bit angry that she had, so chose somebody to blame. Twitter and Facebook should not be used to report people because they don't give you time to sit down and think whether a complaint really is needed!

Anybody who uses Twitter to make false accusations about railway staff deserves to be prosecuted for libel.

 

[SPADTrap]

Personally I think TOCs and other companies should have never gone into using Twitter or Facebook. Personally I never use them for travel updates as there are plenty of other sources. It was their mistake creating twitter accounts in the first place.

 

[Flamingo]

Personally I think TOCs and other companies should have never gone into using Twitter or Facebook. Personally I never use them for travel updates as there are plenty of other sources. It was their mistake creating twitter accounts in the first place.

I have to agree with you there. Use them to distribute information by all means, but some of the foul-mouth rants that I see TOC's responding to in a manner that indicates that behaviour is acceptable makes me weep.

I know that people may be having a bad day - that still does not excuse them from behaving in a civil manner. Accepting bad behaviour, either face-to-face or online is simply confirming to the individual that it is the way to proceed next time.

 

[Clip]

Id never use a social media platform to complain about someone -= too public and its not very nice on the person involved - especially if it is a case like the OPs where the staff member may have been trained in that very way and was unaware it was to open a new credit account with them.


This is why we have customer comment forms and email addresses for this very purpose. That is the correct way to make a complaint about a member of staff

 

[Mark_H]

If a company uses a twitter feed, then it is inviting people to communicate with it via twitter, just in the same way that having an office is an invitation to write to that address.

Legitimate complaints are equally legitimate whether written, emailed, or twittered, just as malicious complaints are equally malicious however used. For some reason there are some red herrings being deployed in this thread to suggest otherwise.

There's a bit of an art to complaining, as you can get quite different teams with different powers replying to different communication channels - as others have said, sometimes forums can be the best method, sometimes letters, and sometimes twitter or email. Insisting on letters (or whatever) as The One True Way is short-sighted.

The only consideration is that a tweet is potentially public, and so may not be appropriate if you need to name a staff member. More importantly, if a situation requires you to name a staff member, I'd imagine it requires more than 140 characters worth of commentary!
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I have to agree with you there. Use them to distribute information by all means, but some of the foul-mouth rants that I see TOC's responding to in a manner that indicates that behaviour is acceptable makes me weep.

I agree, but it's very difficult for companies to empower their staff to treat some customers with the contempt they deserve without creating some potential PR nightmares, which leads to a "customer is always right, apologise and make nice" culture. Said culture might make things a little less stressful for the senior types who might otherwise get these things escalated, but it's really frustrating for staff who feel they are not protected (and my job receives a lot less face-to-face flack than working on the railways).

In my job, I'm allowed to put the phone down on people or walk away from them if absolutely necessary. I've only done it once, and warned people I was about to do it 2 or 3 other times.

 

[jon0844]

I have to agree with you there. Use them to distribute information by all means, but some of the foul-mouth rants that I see TOC's responding to in a manner that indicates that behaviour is acceptable makes me weep.

I know that people may be having a bad day - that still does not excuse them from behaving in a civil manner. Accepting bad behaviour, either face-to-face or online is simply confirming to the individual that it is the way to proceed next time.

We need to adopt the US approach to customer service. Many may see it as fake/false and exaggerated in politeness, but there's one big difference; zero tolerance to abuse.

I've seen it countless times in the US; staff bending over backwards to help an aggrieved customer... but there's a line. Start to be rude or abusive, or even just swearing and you've crossed it. Then it's a straight warning that to continue will mean ending the discussion there and then. And they follow through on it too.

And, more importantly, people around side with the staff member that has been polite and firm - rather than rallying around the abusive person, as I suspect would happen here and has probably happened with you on your trains.

The only consideration is that a tweet is potentially public, and so may not be appropriate if you need to name a staff member. More importantly, if a situation requires you to name a staff member, I'd imagine it requires more than 140 characters worth of commentary!

I'd stop short of naming someone in a public Tweet. Your 140 characters allows you to raise an issue/complaint or ask for clarification - and then you have started a conversation that can continue offline, by email, DM, phone or even post if necessary - but directed at a specific individual/department.

As I've said to Flamingo, a zero tolerance approach needs to be adopted for those people who are rude or malicious - and companies should not be scared to say - in public - that they cannot deal with people who do this.

 

[district]

Twitter is clearly not an appropriate means to complain about a member of staff or discuss an incident, however to notify a company about a defective train (such as Tez's example) or to ask about a delay is, in my opinion, a good use of the medium.

Saying that nobody should ever complain is unpractical in my opinion.

 

[MisterWhippy]

I have complained via Twitter before (but about the company, not a person) and via forums. Generally I've found them to be responsive.

For example, I moaned at London Midland for a reason I can't remember via Twitter and they resolved the issue quite quickly.

 

[EM2]

I use Twitter a lot, and often read the tweets sent to TOCs. I've recently seen C2C block a number of people for swearing, FCC have done the same and Greater Anglia ignore them.
GA also have a group of three or four who will tweet complaints about *everything*, especially the condition of the stock, with comments such as 'corporate Abellio filth' and calling them '73pc tax collectors' & they also get ignored, despite not swearing

 

[Roverman]

We need to adopt the US approach to customer service. Many may see it as fake/false and exaggerated in politeness, but there's one big difference; zero tolerance to abuse.

I've seen it countless times in the US; staff bending over backwards to help an aggrieved customer... but there's a line. Start to be rude or abusive, or even just swearing and you've crossed it. Then it's a straight warning that to continue will mean ending the discussion there and then. And they follow through on it too.

And, more importantly, people around side with the staff member that has been polite and firm - rather than rallying around the abusive person, as I suspect would happen here and has probably happened with you on your trains.



I'd stop short of naming someone in a public Tweet. Your 140 characters allows you to raise an issue/complaint or ask for clarification - and then you have started a conversation that can continue offline, by email, DM, phone or even post if necessary - but directed at a specific individual/department.

As I've said to Flamingo, a zero tolerance approach needs to be adopted for those people who are rude or malicious - and companies should not be scared to say - in public - that they cannot deal with people who do this.

I've not been to America so wasn't aware of the Zero Tolerance attitude but I like the concept a lot. Some of the lies and abuse I've suffered over the last 14 years in my frontline roles have been amazing. A copper wouldn't put up with it so why should I?

 

[johnb]

Anybody who uses Twitter to make false accusations about railway staff deserves to be prosecuted for libel.

Libel isn't a criminal offence, so, erm, no they don't. The staff member is already perfectly within his/her rights to sue their accuser if s/he can be bothered, as long as the accusation is genuinely a false claim that the staff member has failed at a specific aspect of their job ("is a ****" doesn't count, but "is incapable of driving a train" would count).

Surely the TOC should have replied "It is an offence to verbally abuse any of our staff and there fore we shall be taking your abuse further" However we will look into the incident and place a complete explanation on this incident when further information is available"

No, obviously not. It's an offence to verbally abuse staff to their faces because that's personally intimidating. Similarly, if I came up to you in a pub and said "you're a **** and you should **** off and stick your **** up your ****", I'd be done for threatening behaviour, quite rightly. But if I wrote in a pamphlet that you were a ****, etc, then you'd have no recourse and I'd be committing no crime ("vulgar abuse" is not considered libel). Twitter is considered to be equivalent to a pamphlet not to shouting at you in a pub, for obvious reasons.

By the way, I've worked in CS and I'm never abusive to CS staff as a result - I agree strongly with the person upthread who believes everyone should have to go through that apprenticeship to being a decent human being. But the "staff member is always right" attitude some people in this forum show is just as concerning and weird as the entitled prats we're discussing here. In practice, customer services staff can sometimes be immensely incompetent (I know I was sometimes), can be poorly trained (me again), or can enforce rules to the letter even when the consequences are unintended and horrible because they're scared of getting fired (not me, but definitely true for some of my colleagues who actually relied on the job to pay mortgages and feed kids).

Nobody deserves to be yelled at, spat at, sworn at or threatened for doing their job. But some people certainly deserve to be politely reported to management, and some management decisions certainly deserve to be escalated to senior management, the media or the courts (as appropriate). I agree Twitter is the wrong medium for reporting individuals, but it's definitely the right medium for publicising the latter.

 

[Dave1987]

Greater Anglia got some horrendously offense tweets this week on Monday for over running engineering works for which they had no control over what so ever. Some times I feel that TOC's should def stop using twitter as it gives the uninformed passenger permission to be very rude about staff and the company for something that isnt their fault and cant do anything about.

One of our drivers had tweets from people complaining he wasn't making announcements, he was concentrating hard on not having a SPAD and his modified stopping pattern so regular announcements weren't his main priority apart from announcing the modified stopping pattern.

 

[Clip]

If a company uses a twitter feed, then it is inviting people to communicate with it via twitter, just in the same way that having an office is an invitation to write to that address.

Legitimate complaints are equally legitimate whether written, emailed, or twittered, just as malicious complaints are equally malicious however used. For some reason there are some red herrings being deployed in this thread to suggest otherwise.

Yes, bthey are equally legitimate means of complaining or praising a staff member, BUT one is in the public domain which is grossly unfair on the member of staff in both cases and the other keeps it internal and can be dealt with without the whole world knowing who it was about - especially if regular travellers pick up on this and then cause further ubsubstatiated and malicious claims about said staff member.


If it was up to me I would get our lot to bin it all together but alas its very good for getting info out quickly as by the time you send it out on twitter it wouldve got through to driver/guard in the same time .

 

[asylumxl]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this as I've not really kept up with the discussion, but on Twitter it's perfectly possible to send a direct message to the TOC. Twitter defines a private message as such...

A direct message (DM) is a private message sent via Twitter to one of your followers. You can only send a direct message to a user who is following you; you can only receive direct messages from users you follow.

I don't see how that is public. You can announce you have a complaint then I'm sure they'd continue assisting you via DM.

 

[Mark_H]

I'd stop short of naming someone in a public Tweet. Your 140 characters allows you to raise an issue/complaint or ask for clarification - and then you have started a conversation that can continue offline, by email, DM, phone or even post if necessary - but directed at a specific individual/department.

I agree; the only reason I said "may" was to cover the option of saying something nice about a member of staff in public.

I think the converse of exercising my right to complain when warranted, is an obligation to praise staff when they deserve it. For example, in a recent email to TPE and EM to ask which one of them was responsible for some very poor info to passengers, I noted that the station staff had done their very best given the circumstances.
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Yes, bthey are equally legitimate means of complaining or praising a staff member, BUT one is in the public domain which is grossly unfair on the member of staff in both cases and the other keeps it internal and can be dealt with without the whole world knowing who it was about - especially if regular travellers pick up on this and then cause further ubsubstatiated and malicious claims about said staff member.

Yes, and I made (or tried to make, at least) that very distinction in the part of my post that you didn't quote.
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OK. I conceed. Just as long as you are content that a random member of platform staff pops into have a word with your line manager where you work. To make a complaint about you and something you have or haven't done.

I'll repeat : it's an insidious behaviour and its rife in this forum.

Any random member of the public can pop in and complain to my manager. That's pretty much the way it works.

Whether said complaint is upheld is a totally different matter.

Justified complaints, whether general or about specific staff, are just that: justified. There are some very good points being made in this thread about keeping staff names private, about not being abusive when you complain, etc etc, but the general principle of being allowed to complain shouldn't be criticised on the grounds that Some People Do It Wrong.

 

[EM2]

To send a DM, the person you are sending it to has to follow you. TOCs tend not to follow large volumes of users, as they would then receive all their unrelated tweets (uunless they are using a client such as Hoot Suite with good filters).

 

[jon0844]

FCC follows me.

 

[Flamingo]

FCC follows me.

No, they stalk you - there's a difference

 

[asylumxl]

To send a DM, the person you are sending it to has to follow you. TOCs tend not to follow large volumes of users, as they would then receive all their unrelated tweets (uunless they are using a client such as Hoot Suite with good filters).

But as I said, if you send them an initial message without detailing things then complaints can easily be made without them being public via Twitter or other channels.

 

[johnb]

One of our drivers had tweets from people complaining he wasn't making announcements, he was concentrating hard on not having a SPAD and his modified stopping pattern so regular announcements weren't his main priority apart from announcing the modified stopping pattern.

No, Greater Anglia had tweets from people about him. If the poor bloke were getting these sent to his phone whilst he tried not to screw up the train in a tough situation, then obviously that would have been unacceptable.

As it was, something happened along the lines of: @idiotcommuter sent @greateranglia a message saying "bloody driver is a bloody idiot not making any bloody announcements", @greateranglia sent @idiotcommuter a message saying "sorry you had a bad experience we're looking into it", the complaint was looked into and rejected just as a complaint form would have been in the same situation, and everyone was happy.

Genuinely don't understand what's wrong with that.

 

[Clip]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this as I've not really kept up with the discussion, but on Twitter it's perfectly possible to send a direct message to the TOC. Twitter defines a private message as such...
.

And how many TOCs do you think just follow people on Tiwtter? If they dont follow you you cant send a DM.

 

[johnb]

And how many TOCs do you think just follow people on Tiwtter? If they dont follow you you cant send a DM.

If you're managing a corporate Twitter account and have an iota of competence, then you'll autofollow-back everyone who follows you.

It's not like a personal Twitter account where the list of people who follow dictates the stream of things that you see, and you base who you follow on whether they're interesting. For a corporate account, you do not use that general feed at all. You solely use filters, tags and searches.

Following back people who follow you, and also seeking out people who mention you in discussions, engaging with them and following them, ensures that you have a greater connection with the customer, that they're more likely to stay engaged, and that they can send you DMs if they need to.

Luckily from the point of view of frontline staff, all of this is done by geeks and junior PR bunnies; drivers, guards and ticket office staff really do not need to worry about it.

 

[Dave1987]

No, Greater Anglia had tweets from people about him. If the poor bloke were getting these sent to his phone whilst he tried not to screw up the train in a tough situation, then obviously that would have been unacceptable.

As it was, something happened along the lines of: @idiotcommuter sent @greateranglia a message saying "bloody driver is a bloody idiot not making any bloody announcements", @greateranglia sent @idiotcommuter a message saying "sorry you had a bad experience we're looking into it", the complaint was looked into and rejected just as a complaint form would have been in the same situation, and everyone was happy.

Genuinely don't understand what's wrong with that.

As far as I know it was handled differently to that but never mind. What about all the abuse over twitter regarding the over running engineering works. Was that justified?

 

[Clip]

If you're managing a corporate Twitter account and have an iota of competence, then you'll autofollow-back everyone who follows you.

It's not like a personal Twitter account where the list of people who follow dictates the stream of things that you see, and you base who you follow on whether they're interesting. For a corporate account, you do not use that general feed at all. You solely use filters, tags and searches.

Following back people who follow you, and also seeking out people who mention you in discussions, engaging with them and following them, ensures that you have a greater connection with the customer, that they're more likely to stay engaged, and that they can send you DMs if they need to.

Luckily from the point of view of frontline staff, all of this is done by geeks and junior PR bunnies; drivers, guards and ticket office staff really do not need to worry about it.

You shouldnt follow them back at all automatically. The best way is responding to a request to be followed for the purpose of sending a DM and then unfollowing up. No need for filters or anything else, cleans up the timeline and lets the staff focus on whats needed.

 

[jon0844]

No, they stalk you - there's a difference

I wasn't talking about Twitter... They're outside my house now.

As it was, something happened along the lines of: @idiotcommuter sent @greateranglia a message saying "bloody driver is a bloody idiot not making any bloody announcements", @greateranglia sent @idiotcommuter a message saying "sorry you had a bad experience we're looking into it", the complaint was looked into and rejected just as a complaint form would have been in the same situation, and everyone was happy.

Genuinely don't understand what's wrong with that.

Like when the police occasionally release recordings of stupid 999 calls, I think there are many benefits of having 'idiotcommuter' moaning in public - and being shown up for the idiot they are, and showing everyone what a company has to deal with day to day.

And how many TOCs do you think just follow people on Tiwtter? If they dont follow you you cant send a DM.

The normal practice is that you'll raise a concern to a company, which will then ask for more info by DM - and follow you from that point forward.

It also focusses the mind, knowing that everything you say from now on could be seen (in reality, their software will filter things and look for keywords to trigger their attention). Twitter (and the various apps for consumers and businsses) is actually pretty clever.

And I say this as someone who spent months saying Twitter was a complete waste of time, and only used by people in the media or those members of the public that felt they were now friends with the celebrities they could legally stalk - and that everything Tweeted by a celeb wasn't just a very well thought out way to self-promote.

I guess you just have to find what works for you. For me, I follow technology companies, fellow journalists, some friends and the companies that provide advice - I don't follow anyone from TOWIE, X Factor or Hollywood etc.

 

[09065]

If you're managing a corporate Twitter account and have an iota of competence, then you'll autofollow-back everyone who follows you.

Why would you do a really stupid thing like that? If you follow everyone who follows you then you are giving a lot of spammy accounts a lot of credibility for being followed by a company.

I would list more but I am still astounded by your lack of competence on the matter (less than an iota) and I am hopeful you already know that if your Twitter account is mentioned you already get alerted to this in the baulk of the social media dashboard clients on the market and can configure relevant filters if you have multiple social media profiles.

If the need rises to follow somebody to discuss matters via a DM then fine; but if you don't need to then it is not going to affect the customer relationship if you don't.

 

[87015]

As far as I know it was handled differently to that but never mind. What about all the abuse over twitter regarding the over running engineering works. Was that justified?

So as usual your GA blinkers don't mention the delays which were down to a unit fault tripping the OHL, which is almost as many minutes as the overrrun. You don't seem to grasp how bad the GA reputation among customers is, and that it is for a good reason - if I paid the required £££ for what they get i'd be agitated easily as well - but moaning about it every time wears thin.

If companies choose to go into twitter, which seems to be more and more required admittedly, than they need to accept they will have to take the rough with the smooth. It 'empowers' people to be able to fire complains off the hook so its not a surprise when people do so...

 

[Dave1987]

So as usual your GA blinkers don't mention the delays which were down to a unit fault tripping the OHL, which is almost as many minutes as the overrrun. You don't seem to grasp how bad the GA reputation among customers is, and that it is for a good reason - if I paid the required £££ for what they get i'd be agitated easily as well - but moaning about it every time wears thin.

If companies choose to go into twitter, which seems to be more and more required admittedly, than they need to accept they will have to take the rough with the smooth. It 'empowers' people to be able to fire complains off the hook so its not a surprise when people do so...

Sorry but I dont have my "GA blinkers" on. What really did make me smile was that one person put could C2C please come and take over from GA. Well considering that C2C are operated by National Express the company to which they were all saying they couldn't wait to get rid of, forgive me if I a bit of a sceptic to these people who are "empowered" to have their say.

 

[jon0844]

Twitter is a good way of revealing the many idiots in society.

I stupidly made a comment about Gerry McCann and the hypocrisy of him wanting to censor the press that he had in the palm of his hands for so long, then 'turned against them' by asking perfectly normal and obvious questions they didn't like - like why they left their kids alone, if they were involved, what of them becoming official suspects etc.

I have since had someone telling me that it was perfectly normal and acceptable to leave kids alone and that it's just typical of this politically correct society we now live in to suggest otherwise! It beggars belief that people can think it's okay to leave kids alone night after night on holiday while going out drinking.

Anyway - totally off topic. Sorry!