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A Best Buy Manager Thinks That The 3,000 Employees Running Its Customer Service Twitter Account Can’t Be Trusted

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-best-buy-manager-thinks-that-the-3000-employees-running-its-customer-service-twitter-account-dont-matter-2012-1

Best Buy hasn’t been doing so hot lately, and here’s another example that shows why.

The retailer has a Twitter account @Twelpforce that uses 3,000+ employees to help run it. So far it has worked without a major disaster, despite the exposure it has with so many employees working on it.

But at least one Best Buy manager disagrees, and thinks it’s basically a load of crap, reports Chris Morran at the Consumerist.

Morran received a note from a reader, Jonathan, explaining his experience. Jonathan was trying to exchange a box set of CDs, which was missing one CD when he got it, but didn’t have the receipt. The Best Buy site pointed him toward @Twelpforce, who told him to “Talk to a manager at your local Best Buy, they should be able to assist with exchange.”

He did. When he showed the Best Buy manager the tweet from customer service, he dismissed it as an unreliable source (even though the Best Buy website tells you that the only places to ask questions are a phone number and the Twitter account). The manager also said that it’s “just social media” and “that could be anybody.”

Which begs the question: what’s the point of having a customer service Twitter account if Best Buy managers don’t even acknowledge it as a legitimate source of information? Somebody got company policy wrong here, but whether it’s the manager or the person who answered that tweet doesn’t matter. The manager shouldn’t have dismissed the Twitter help line as useless.

It shows a fundamental disconnect between the brick-and-mortar and the online world. The corporate side has accepted that social media is a viable tool, yet that feeling hasn’t been passed down to its employees — even at the manager level. Oops.

NOW SEE: 14 Surprising Ways Employees Cost Their Companies Billions In The Workplace >

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See Also:

• 11 Craft Beer Companies That Went From Little To Big Time
• Proof That Giving Your Employees More Freedom Makes Them More Productive
• Starbucks Is Hiking Prices On A Bunch Of Its Drinks To Deal With Rising Costs

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