Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? HTC Singapore Quits Facebook After Customer Complaints

Recently, HTC Singapore withdrew customer service support from its Facebook wall. While this move seems to be part of efforts to improve the overall customer service experience, it does not seem to address customers’ wants, nor does it take into account how the Internet has changed the consumer landscape. The voices on the Internet fora will not change unless and until companies can deliver on their promises.

For Customer Service, Please Dial 1

On May 10, this post appeared on the wall of HTC Singapore’s Facebook page:

Thanks to everyone who has been contributing to the HTC Facebook Wall. We’re no longer supporting it. Nonetheless, watch out on this space for updates & freshest promotions!

The response from Facebook users was swift and vicious. Typical of many comments posted, Boresoft McBalls wrote, “VERY smart move, HTC Singapore. Set up a page to connect with your beloved customers, realise you ACTUALLY have to answer their questions, and run away! Looking forward to my new iPhone.”

According to HTC Singapore, they are no longer supporting customer queries via their Facebook wall because, “The questions posted tend to be very generic, so our customer service agents still have to track down the customer to clarify. This means that we cannot offer the customer speedy service.

“Also, because the questions posted are generic and don’t provide context, other customers may get a misconception of what our service standards are.”

Support is a Two-Way Street

Given the flavour of the comments posted on the Facebook page and elsewhere (see: Horrendous experience in getting Nexus One replaced for factory defects ) it is clear that customers have serious complaints about HTC Singapore. Kenntt from HardwareZone.Com posted, “I am personally tired of HTC postponing the HTC Hero Android 2.1 update. This will be my last HTC product until they get their act together. It seems like they like to sell, but don’t like to service the customer.”

Regardless of whether a Facebook page should be treated like a support desk (for reference, HTC US responds to complaints posted on Twitter), on social media platforms customers expect to be able to interact with the company, rather than passively receive information as via traditional media. As Lee Chee Wee notes on the wall, “Funny that HTC Singapore is ‘no longer supporting’ this page but still expects people to stay and watch this page for promotions….Any company that wants to leverage on the power of social media cannot afford to be anti-social…”

Feeling Good is Not Good Enough

While HTC Singapore is doing the right thing in engaging customers through a variety of channels (e.g. workshops, reaching out to bloggers), companies need to understand that nothing can replace quality of product and quality of service. Customers expect promises to be kept (Android update, ahem) and to respond in a timely fashion to their problems. When this does not happen, platforms such as blogs and Facebook makes it easy to disseminate their experience to the wider public very quickly.

Although Asia does not have a site like The Consumerist collating experiences of poor service it is not difficult for anyone in the market for a new smartphone to Google for information. Unless HTC Singapore understands that customers will continue to share their experiences online, and begins to engage them in a meaningful way (for a start: treat the Facebook wall as an aggregator of sentiment and act on them), expect to hear more from customers like Jaslynn Teo who love their phones but hate the service who will vote with their feet.