Tesla Is Hiring People To Handle Complaints People Tweet At Elon Musk (engadget.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Elon Musk wears many hats, but it seems that Twitter customer support may no longer be one of them. The company is hiring remote support staff to, along with other duties, handle complaints people tweet at him. Among the job responsibilities of Tesla Energy Support Specialists are to resolve or redirect grievances as needed and to "address social media escalations directed at the CEO with critical thinking." The company ditched its PR department last year, and the support specialists are now "the front line and face of the Tesla brand," according to a job listing.
News for nerds? (Score:5, Informative)
Come on guy, every company does this. They have people looking after their various social media accounts, and this is not noteworthy.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. Heck, I have someone to manage my slashdot comments. I'm not even writing this.
Re: News for nerds? (Score:4, Funny)
Great! Because we're not even reading this!
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Me neither :-)
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I hired someone to not read the article for me.
Re: News for nerds? (Score:2)
I would never dream of not reading anything else but /.
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Thinking about it wasn't one of the conditions of Musk's settlement with the SEC that Tesla appoint someone to vet his tweets before they go out?
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Maybe not for the CEO's personal account.
But I hope the corporate replies are just as trollish.
South Park did it (Score:1)
Has Musk has been binge watching old South Park episodes? Specifically, this one [fandom.com].
I feel bad for whoever takes this job.
Fucking millennials (Score:3, Interesting)
Because Twitter is the correct platform to report bugs and problems. Not a trouble ticket CRM or bug tracker, but an asshat platform, filled with twits, expressing everything into a 120 character half-thought of broken english.
This is why I wear a shirt that says -
I am fairly certain YOLO is Carpe Diem for stupid people.
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Re: Fucking millennials (Score:2)
There is no such thing as a bug that fits into 120 characters.
Or a thought that isn't so half-thought-through you might aswell imagine the person posting it is drooling om himself.
A bug report must be reproducible. So it requires a precise description how to get there, with zero ambuguities, the entire context (lik device model, software version, etc) , the result, and the expected result. As in: What a bug tracker asks you.
Anything else can be safely ignored and deleted as it will only waste you time. On m
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Sometimes Twitter just gets the job done when a company lacks a "contact us for any reason, and write whatever you want" method.
As for how
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I have ultimately received support and resolutions to issues after reaching out on twitter. You know what it does not make me happy.
What it means is that I have to essentially publicly shame the organization into resolving an issue with product. Having aleady reached out through their ordinary support channels first and either not been responded to in a timely fashion, given some run around, or blown off with some shabby "you're holding it wrong" like dismissal. It tells me they have zero care about me as a
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but there is no queueing process in twitter. Have you ever looked at all the assholes that responded negatively anytime trump posted literally anything? I mean why waste your time? Millions of posts every time he says anything. How is that an effective method for reporting issues? I cannot see this as anything but dysfunctional. I would say Apple is a good example of what you describe. There is no feedback process to bugs. Just a forum where people bitch constantly with no idea if the developers are even aw
Re: A Good Bug Tracker (Score:2)
> everybody else can read along as well. Internally Tesla should of course still have a good bug tracker
A clear sign of a good organization is that it has a bug tracker in which a member of the public can post and _track_ his bugs. (My rule of thumb is that a product that only allows bug reports via email is not worth filing bugs against.) A really good product lets the public track and search the bugs as well; e.g. compare Apple with LLVM.
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> asshat
> twits
> 120 character
> shirt that says
> stupid people
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> asshat
> twits
> 120 character
> shirt that says
> stupid people
Burma-Shave
Hit them where it hurts (Score:3)
If customer support isn't responsive enough, making a stink in a visible way with the CEO is next best.
This just means Tesla is more concerned about its public image than the quality of its products.
You need to hit them where it hurts. In this case: Twitter
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I dont know, apple is a good example of banging your head against the jerusalem prayer wall when it comes to even getting them to acknowledge they are even aware of a issue that arose after the last update (for example having to re-login or unlock my account every other day, there are hundreds of complaints on the forum about that)
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Because Twitter is the correct platform to report bugs and problems. Not a trouble ticket CRM or bug tracker, but an asshat platform, filled with twits, expressing everything into a 120 character half-thought of broken english.
Finally something on which we agree. You have to go to twitter to get action out of many companies now. It's pathetic. I don't want to have to publicly shame my way into technical support. This is especially notably true of eBay.
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I dont even know if publicly shaming apple will get them to acknowledge their bugs. Im not even demanding a fix as long as I am aware they know about the bugs (like since Nov having to re-login to my apple account constantly. Sometimes I even have to unlock the account) But not even a 'we are working on it'. Sometimes people are so much of a fan that it doesnt matter how bad you treat them.
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The advantage of Twitter is that your complaint is public and motivates them to sort it out.
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you really think that would work on a highly popular company like apple? They could figuratively smear stool samples on their boxes the phones came in and people would still buy it even if it risked hepatitis. I think publicly shaming only works when there is genuine fear, not threats, of not doing business. Most people are locked into their platform these days. At one time the EU did a good job of requiring music to be able to be moved between android and iphone (ie the export to mp3 option) which benefit
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A lot of companies customer service won't do shit until they company is publicly shamed on social media.
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To do it right, the company should have a good tracking team on the twitter feed. Triage it quickly, remove spam, elevator pitches, and trolls. Sort legitimate co
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seems easier and a lot less work/money to just roll the reporting feature into the application itself. you would not need a team of mules cutting through all the FUD that shows up. And in the case of a Tesla car, submitting a trouble ticket or bug report could automatically attach all the system logs like some routers/switches have the feature to generate a system report which just archives a bunch of files and dumps any memory register settings.
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I'd much prefer to file a ticket, but it seems like more and more companies are not providing that as an option. You must have encountered "support" pages that are nothing more than a search engine into their documentation? They may provide a phone number, but good luck getting someone human on the line.
I've used Twitter for support not because it's my preferred method but rather as a last resort when it's the only way I can get someone human to read my message.
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Companies respond to tweets of bugs and problems. Why would I hide it in a bugtracker to constantly stay in the backlog as opposed to taking an approach that has been showed to work?
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Because Twitter is the correct platform to report bugs and problems.
As a consumer, the appeal of tweeting "I can't believe how misaligned my trim is on my new @Tesla Model Y! C'mon @ElonMusk, you can do better!" is you will likely get a response from someone empowered to actually do something about your issue. Why? Because that tweet is public.
It's especially true when you Tweet an issue at an airline.
Filling a form into a CRM means it just goes into a black hole.
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no car warranty? If that happened on any other car you would take it back to the dealership and it gets fixed at no cost to the consumer. That seems like instead of twitter, Consumer Protections needs to be involved. If its systemic they can force a recall.
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https://twitter.com/MrVinAZ/st... [twitter.com]
This will only encourage mroe of this (Score:5, Interesting)
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Contacting CEO as the first stop in problem escalation is bad customer support practice that should not be encouraged. There needs to be better tier 1 support AND there needs to be a clear escalation mechanism for customers to follow.
You're absolutely right. Now Tesla needs to learn that too.
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Great. Tesla can do that by fixing their QA and QC process so people don't have to use support in the first place. Gap issues, glass misalignments, paint issues and other things you don't see on even a cheap econobox shouldn't be an issue on premium vehicle that Teslas are.
The
Just get off of fucking Twitter! (Score:2)
Stop being such an attention whore!
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Stop being such an attention whore!
But I can't get off Twitter!
I'd have to be on Twitter in the first place to do so /s
Are there 12 of them? (Score:2)
Elon got scared. (Score:2)
PR by any other name (Score:3)
Comes as no surprise. For a business of any size, or celebrity of any stature, an effective PR strategy, and the staff to make it happen, is crtical to keeping the brand clean, and on track. Introducing "Tesla Energy Support Specialists" as "new positions" is an ineffective attempt to reintroduce a PR department, without having to acknowledge the decision to shut it down previously was wrong.
Sounds like a Gig job (Score:1)
This should be a new gig economy job. Hire people on the side to handle your PR in the off hours.
Though I would probably get fired, my first response would be:
"Yes, I know I am a bit of a psychopath and not all that knowledgeable, but I run companies that build cool cars and cool rockets. Doesn't that make up for me being a terrible human being and conspiracy theorist?"
On the plus side (Score:2)
There probably isn't a drug test involved in getting this job
Good ops investment (Score:2)
Every minute Musk wastes on Twitter is one minute he is not working on company business to improve it. Turning over Twit responses to PR only makes sense.
Also, they are likely to be less emotional in their responses, which will give the company(s) a better image.
Of course he will want to do his own posts in what amounts to his own recreational time. This should not change that. If I were launching those rockets and factories I would tweet about it too.
I think my solution to nasty twitter tweets is (Score:2)