If you use Twitter as a customer engagement channel, you’ll eventually end up in a situation where you want to communicate with someone or have them send you information by direct message. If you’re not following each other, chances are it will be a frustrating experience for everyone because Twitter doesn’t let you send a direct message to someone who doesn’t follow you.
That makes a lot of sense because it you can only send messages to people who want to hear from you. You can’t spam people by direct message.
It becomes a problem, however, if you’re trying to respond privately to customers who don’t follow you. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Twitter’s help bar is wrong.
Here’s an example. I tried to send a direct message from a Twitter account I maintain at work to my personal account and received this error message:
Here’s the problem. If you send follow gturpin to Twitter, you start following @gturpin, not the other way around. It doesn’t send a message to @gturpin requesting to follow you.* Click to see the image at full size.
It doesn’t allow you to send a direct message. It gives you the wrong information and leads you to believe that you’re doing the right thing.
That’s broken.
Usability fail, Twitter.
Notes:- * That would get ugly in a hurry. [↩]
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