Is blogging replacing customer service?
I know that I am not the only Mac user that has encountered problems with Time Machine backups. Today, my Time Machine was stuck on “preparing” and would not actually begin the backup process. Being overly paranoid that my computer will crash the one day I do not back it up, I was determined to fix the issue immediately.
I had a few options: 1. Bring my computer to the Apple store 2. Call the Apple customer service line 3. See if a quick Google search could turn up some helpful results. I chose the latter, as it was the cheapest and easiest. I started with the Apple online help pages, assuming this information would be the most credible. Unfortunately, I found no suggestions for a fix that I had not already tried. I then moved to the Apple forums, which provided very technical information that I could barely decipher and felt nervous to try. Finally, I started searching for tech blogs.
I came across Aaron West’s Technology Blog. He seemed to have some credentials and had written a post about a year ago about the same problem I was encountering with Time Machine. So I read through the post, which had simple enough instructions, and gave it a go. Twenty minutes later, my external hard drive was backing up my computer and all was well.
The experience made me wonder if blogging is replacing customer service. This was not the first time that I received better information from a blogger than from a company itself. The internet is free, unlike many help lines which cost cell minutes and sometimes actual call charges, and many companies’ online help pages are less than useful.
What are your thoughts? Have you found niche bloggers to be more helpful than phone calls or company help pages? Is this another area in which we are moving more toward social media as opposed to traditional outlets?
