Long Time No Post: Facebook Doesn't Understand Customer Service

When you run a business like Facebook there are four basic areas you would staff (beyond all the backbone that keeps a business running):

1. Coding and Design - making everything functional
2. Sales and Money - ads and stuff
3. Servers, Networks and Security - keeping the site up and connected
4. Customer Complaints

One way to really fall down on your face is to staff #4 with people who don't understand customer service.

I made a complaint on Facebook. I made a complaint because after taking a quiz I was suggested I take another quiz. The quiz I took was undoubtedly silly and likely to be something along the lines of "What Muppet Are You?" or "Who Are These 80's Stars?".

The quiz I was recommended by Facebook was, "What Kind of Girl Would You Like to Fuck?".

The picture of said quiz was an upskirt shot of a girl with no underwear, her legs akimbo, and her head cropped out.

I complained to Facebook that I found THAT offensive (to the generic complaint email).

To which Facebook replied that I didn't complain in the right channel and thus my complaint was being ignored.

That irritated me -- I had gone through the entire help site and there was no channel for reporting offensive applications.

I replied to the same address with a complaint about the process.

Today, 91 days after my original complaint, I received a reply -- explaining to me that I must, in order to complain, find the offensive application (how?), TAKE the quiz in question, and on the final about screen, complain to its developer.

Seriously, Facebook, seriously?

This is the best you can do?

I know we inhabit a world of forced self-service where no one talks to humans for customer service, but it takes a special kind of lameness to have not one but two humans refer a customer to self-service and never take action on the root problem reported.

Wow, just... wow.

If I was the Facebook sales rep selling ads to Pepsi^® and Ticketmaster^® and Pepto-Bismal^® I would be very concerned that these ads didn't pop up next to porn. I promise you the brand managers for the companies do care.

This one application is a drop, I am sure, in the bucket... but the staff's inability and/or lack of will to actually deal with these problems would mean a lot of full buckets.

I don't even know what to make of this...

I tweeted the words, "cream cheese."

The following was the result, about 6 hours later.

Ok, Kraft, that's just dumb.

I would get it if I twittered and blogged cooking tips or recipes... but I don't. Normally I tweet personal stuff and/or Web 2.0 items.

So what this reveals is that anyone using "cream cheese" in a Twitter message will be followed by Kraft.

I would be impressed if they followed people posting cooking stuff -- hey, trying to improve the product, etc. However, indiscriminate following just means they aren't actually reading any of it...

Sincerity counts for something, even in Web 2.0, and this showcases an obvious lack of that.

Seen Online: Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person

Somewhat ironically, they don't have an "embed this flash presentation in the YouTube sized box on your site" link, so:

http://smithsonian20.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/web-t.html

Pizza Hut + My Blackberry + Cultural Unawareness

Pizza Hut (one of my favorite blog subjects) is back today.

This post is less about them and more about me.

I live in a football-free world. I don't watch, I don't root, I don't discuss. So, until MSNBC started posting articles about the Superbowl commercials, I had no idea the Superbowl was coming up.

Pizza Hut doesn't know my very well.

They sent the following email to me -- which was viewed on my Blackberry.

The subject line of the email was, "Big Game, Small Price. Feed your Fans with $5 Pizza Mia Pizzas!"

Except the Blackberry doesn't have that much room.

So, I saw, "Big Game, Small Price."

And my immediate football-free brain thought, "Why is Pizza Hut emailing me about hunting deer?"

Amazon: Two Steps Forward, 1/2 a Step Back

So, Amazon just announced a large effort to work with their vendors to get rid of packaging. They are touting this as customer service usability, which it is. (I think there's a couple of side effects they aren't disclosing such as a)preventing returns of Amazon goods to brick and mortar stores and b)getting Amazon off of the Stupid Shipping Gang usual suspects list).

So I think, "Yes! Amazon is helping to make packages safe to open and making the online shipping process much more green."

I'm very excited by Amazon throwing its economic weight behind improved packaging design.

However, someone at Amazon needs to learn how to make content accessible. Because a two screen long cut and past dump from Photoshop, complete with non-Unicode characters, is NOT making this content accessible.

Imagine for a moment you are blind. You love online retail -- you don't have to try and navigate the Kroger anymore, you can order online. Of course, this only happens when stores make content accessible.

As a blind person, clamshell packaging is really rather dangerous. You prefer not to deal with it.

Here's Amazon announcing they are getting rid of your nemesis Clamshell... and you can't access the message because it's only nominally accessible.

As someone who cares about accessibility, things like this are really frustrating to see. (Just like it's frustrating that the blogger templates and image addition aren't accessible, either.)

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