The first casualty in the War for Facebook is Customer Service?

[cyrano]

On the 22nd of August, I swam through the FaceBook help pages until I located the way to ask an actual specific question. A caveat: I am generally not opposed to this practice, having worked in customer service and knowing that most end users will jump to the 'go directly to a rep and make them answer me' button rather than wasting time reading documentation. But there's a fine line between We really want you to look at the FAQ first and in the cellar, no lights, no stairs, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' which, more and more, has become the standard model. And the addition of 'why don't you ask each other these questions in our handy forum?' is a particularly clever outgrowth of the Don't ask us, aren't you all Web2.0 and shit?. But that's neither here nor there; I apologise for the digression.

I had my LiveJournal set up to echo over to FaceBook, so I didn't have to actually log in as often and risk getting sucked into the hundreds of mini-updates and 'what flavor of chewing gum are you' quiz results. And right around the time of the big DoS attacks, that stopped working. I figured that they were probably related, and waited until I saw my friends' LiveJournal postings start filtering into FaceBook again. Then I poked at my account. And that was when I began the Bataan Help Page March.

Amusingly, it was the forum that finally led me to the 'mail a help staff' page. I filled the form with as much information as I could, trying to be helpful in my own helpful way. And of course the first response was a form letter which had a tangential relationship (the sort of 'third cousin from a branch of the family we don't talk about' relationship) to my initial question. And, in helpful Customer Service fashion, at the bottom of the page they said If your question is not in the list above, please reply to this email with any details that will help us to resolve your issue.

More fool I, I actually did write back. I was not as informative this time, since (a) I'm lazy and (b) they didn't include my initial letter so I could c/p. I suppose this should have been my first clue.

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Cyrano Jones <cyranocyrano@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, the extra details that might be helpful are that I had the feed from LiveJournal working before the DoS issues, but now I don't.

Sure. A little terse, but I just wanted to get the ball back in their court so an actual human person would get a look at it and get back to me.

Oh you laugh now, but this was when I was young and idealistic, Candide frolicking in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Cyrano Jones <cyranocyrano@gmail.com> wrote:

I know you're understaffed in this department, but I was wondering if there was a time frame on when you might get back to me. Thanks!

I gave them 48 hours. Perhaps a little short, but at AltaVista our turnaround was 24 hours, spot on. And I think I was pretty polite.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 11:05 PM, Cyrano Jones <cyranocyrano@gmail.com> wrote:

I hate to be a bother, but I was hoping somebody could get back to me on this.
Alternately, if you're looking to hire people to staff this position, let me know--I have a strong history in customer service.

A little less polite, but still light, with a bit of humor and some shameless self promotion. (You never know where a job offer will come from. PS: Anybody hiring out there?)

And today, there's this.

to The Facebook Team <info+dcdecox@facebook.com>
date Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 11:16 AM
subject Re: NEWSFEED: DoS and collection from third party sources
mailed-by gmail.com

hide details 11:16 AM (0 minutes ago)

Hey there. I'm beginning to sense that this is not a high priority issue for you. Perhaps neither am I--I'm only a single user, and a free user at that--so I'm going to stop bothering you about it. Thanks for the pre-written FAQ, though.

And now I'm going to write a song about how FaceBook breaks guitars. If you've read this far, then you're obviously just a little bit mad and are just the sort to begin a ReTweet/ReLiveJournal/Whatever campaign that gains national attention and brings the Vice President of Customer Relations to my door (It's like a five minute walk, NBD) to fix the problem personally.
And once I get a lucrative book deal and blog column offer with Slate, I will name drop each and every one of you shamelessly. In fact, I will wear a t-shirt when I go on Larry King with everybody's name on it.

Comments

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

I just skimmed it, but now I think you took a facebook quiz and won a T-shirt with the face of Larry King on it.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

TL:DR

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Since it is a five minute walk away, why don't you go over and ask your question?

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Because I expect it'll end up being a lot like swimming through the help pages, but with a nice little walk thrown in.
However, it *is* a nice little walk. And the worst they can do is call security and have me thrown off the premises.

[reluctantgenius.livejournal.com]

Take a friend with a video camera and you can post a video of getting thrown out on your Facebook page.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

That would be AWESOME.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I sympathise with your problem.

(And I thank you for writing it in a way that made me laugh immoderately.)