The word on the street is O2
The word on the street is O2
Tonight Twitter has been awash with reports of the social media team at O2 responding to a customer’s query using street slang. The image on this page is a snapshot of the conversation.
A couple of Storify reports have been created of the conversation between customer @Tunde24_7 and the @O2 team where you can see the exchange in full (warning – there is language in there that you may find offensive).
A step too far?
I’m curious to know what professional communicators think about the exchange. Is it a step in the right direction or a step too far? Do you ever have cause within your communications to use slang and particularly in this manner? If you do, please let me know as I’d love to feature it as a case study on my blog.
My take is that I’m amused by the responses and the fact the O2 social media team has clearly taken the time to engage directly with the tweeter and try to resolve his query. I have to admit I don’t know what half of the words mean and had to look them up via the urban dictionary.
I can picture the team crafting their responses and chuckling to themselves. I’ve sent them a message via Twitter asking if they’d like to comment on their approach. Should they do so, I will update this article to include it.
This isn’t the first time that O2 has made waves with their social media activity via their O2 in the UK Twitter account. Back in July they were praised for their response via Twitter to customers who were expressing their frustration for an outage they were experiencing. You can read a Guardian article about it here.
Do let me know your take on their tweets by commenting below, Rachel.
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Ross
- 11 October 2012 at 1:31 pm
My first reaction was the same as yours – it’s like getting a tweet from Ali G. But looking at the conversation it seems fair game to me in that they’re talking the same language as the customer and they are after all a mobile phone company.
Not something we’d ever get away with in public service because it just wouldn’t be appropriate but this certainly gave me a chuckle and both parties seems to enjoy the conversation so why not.
I’m also pretty sure both parties had a tongue firmly in the cheek, or maybe not.
Rachel Miller
- 11 October 2012 at 3:44 pm
I think you’re right Ross – you certainly get the impression that they were both enjoying the exchange, and can see it probably wouldn’t work in the public sector! But who knows, maybe someone out there has used language in this way successfully? Thanks for commenting, Rachel
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