There was an option to run a banner ad above the title banner, but no option to centre it – so I had to keep trying to guess the padding required on the ad, to try and centre it – a slow and frustrating process for a technical moron such as myself. Every time I adjusted the padding, the alignment on the text underneath went screwy.
I tell you this thrilling tale to explain why I found myself tweeting this:
Two minutes later, an email landed in my inbox - an automated message to say that a support ticket had been opened in my Typepad account. I logged in to see this:
Now, I want to think this is just brilliant customer service – Typepad clearly monitors Twitter, saw my message, worked out who I was by clicking from my Twitter bio to my blog, and opened a support ticket for me to resolve whatever problem I was having. Impressive.
And yet in my head I hear that message in the voice of HAL. "I'm sorry you're frustrated, Sally. This can only be attributed to human error." It just seems a bit - well - creepy.
Yesterday, I blogged about my email overload and moaned (nothing unusual there, then) about DWPub sending me loads of emails. Today, I got an email from Vanessa at DWPub, saying, “I understand you’re receiving multiple copies of emails from us, and I’m sorry that this is inconvenient…”
This is unusually keen, but not creepy in the way the Typepad message was creepy. So I started wondering about why one message was weird, and the other not.
I think the difference is that actual people at DWPub know who I am. The CEO came to my wedding. I've been to their parties. I follow someone from the company on Twitter. I guess they follow me back. I know people from the company read my blogs regularly, and comment sometimes. So I'm glad they were listening and are now trying to fix what's evidently a problem.
With Typepad, they must have had to do a bit of work to identify me - presumably searching Twitter for the company name, then clicking to find my blog and account details, before deciding to email me AND open a support ticket without my even asking for help. While it solved the problem, I'm just not 100 percent comfortable with it.
What do you reckon – does social media just enable better service or does it sometimes veer into creepy territory? And where's the dividing line?
