For corporate America, social media has become equal parts science and art. Great care must be taken regarding what is said on official corporate accounts, but those things must be said in a way that reflects, at a minimum, a basic degree of self-awareness.
The folks at DirecTV are lacking when it comes to the latter, as evidenced by a rash of messages sent by the various persons having keys to official DirecTV Twitter accounts in response to complaints about the increase in the 2018 price of the NFL Sunday Ticket package.
The fun started on Monday, when we noticed that Darren Rovell of ESPN tweeted a link to the PFT story on the price hike. A user named Reid Stillman responded to the news with a profane gif that invited DirecTV to do something to itself. And someone from the DirecTV social-media team actually tried to engage him.
Greetings Reid, how may we be of assistance to your needs? Provide us details of your service concerns via message & we'd be happy to further look into some possible options for this matter. Let us know! ^NIsha J.
— DIRECTV (@DIRECTV) February 19, 2018
Reid responded with a far less profane gif that indicated his intent to cancel the service. Someone else from the DirecTV social-media shop attempted to turn things around.
We'd hate to see you go! Can you provide us more details about what happen? Let us turn this around for you! We're here for you! ^BriT
— DIRECTV (@DIRECTV) February 19, 2018
After another user attempted to explain on Reid’s behalf the likely reason for the decision to move on, yet another DirecTV representative sprang into action.
Hello! We appreciate your feedback on the change and are constantly working to help improve your entertainment experience. Let us know if there is anything we can assist you with. We are here for you! ^CiaraJ
— DIRECTV (@DIRECTV) February 20, 2018
It continues, with three more responses from the official DirecTV account. We then noticed that the original tweet from the PFT account regarding the price increase generated more than 25 responses from multiple different DirecTV/AT&T accounts.
One conclusion can be drawn from these messages: The accounts are staffed either by poorly-programmed bots or the most hilariously passive-aggressive customer-service representatives in the world.
Whatever the explanation, DirecTV should re-think its approach to dealing with social-media complaints. Doing nothing at all would be far better than the bizarre display that unfolded on Monday.
