In my New Media and PR class last week we touched on the corporate trend of establishing highly responsive customer service teams on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Several classmates shared examples of how they tweeted to various companies like JetBlue about flight delays or booking issues and were responded to within minutes; they even occasionally received additional perks and touchpoints from those customer service reps. It's an amazing innovation in customer service, and as someone who has used Twitter to praise and bring up issues with companies like Zappos, Comcast, Peter Pan and Greyhound Bus lines, and HootSuite, it is refreshingly satisfying to receive a direct response (even if it isn't a solution) from an identifiable person. But when I think about the hours I have wasted on the phone to get someone at Sprint to pick up the phone and then get transferred to eight different departments, I began to wonder if other people are still forced to endure that lack of customer service because of the mediums they utilize? Does (unintentional) discrimination exist for communities that either don't have the tech literacy (e.g. the elderly) or access (e.g. low-income families) to use social media?
