Well, well, well. Looks like I'm not the only one that feels pain. Maybe I should've friended Scoble for faster customer service.
Luckily, I got my Facebook account back last week thanks to a kind soul with User Operations. What seemed like months to restore my account was really a few weeks. was a mere few weeks. While not ideal -- I wanted it fixed in days, even hours -- it could've been far worse or simply never resolved.
I applaud CNET's Caroline McCarthy for being so fair in her assessment of Facebook's current database dilemma:
With over 300 million active users around the world, we shouldn't expect Facebook to be able to respond to every inquiry it receives. And Facebook is a free product, so it arguably doesn't have a customer service obligation on par with your cable company or the Web site where you bought your last pair of shoes. But this is still a real problem for the social network, which has become so ingrained in culture and communication that for some people it's replaced the address book, the e-mail client, and the personal Web site. Many of the e-mails [received] came from people who say that Facebook is their primary method of communication with far-flung family and friends. Others said it's crucial to how they do business.
It's true. Facebook can only service the customer so much. And when I lost my old Gmail account last month around the time I lost Facebook, Google was no help whatsoever. And who can blame them? The major players offer unlimited web resources with limited people resources, whether we like it or not. It's a take-a-number mentality and until somebody invents a truly "human scalable" model of technical support, then please continue to hold...
This is why I laugh when I read fanciful approaches to customer service from bright-eyed and bushy-tailed startups like iPhone fitness app developer Gymfu:*
- Answer ALL emails and tweets.
- Build a support site that is SEO’d and contains all the questions people ask (support.gymu.com).
- Find our evangelists and love them.
- Find our haters and love them more than our own mothers.
- Do whatever it takes to fix a customer’s problem, even if that means meeting them to give them pre-release code!
That's great if you're a niche mobile app with a loyal yet modest user base. Not so realistic if said base grows by a googol.
Curses that I can't find the bookmark, but I recall an editorial from last year claiming how we want all want to be treated on a first-name, coffeehouse-cozy basis -- at big box retail with low, low prices. The same customer service conundrum applies here. The Facebook fallen want to be treated and released, but are instead forced to wait with the rest of the walking wounded. Call centers, community-based support sites, knowlege bases, wikis and whatnot -- sure, they help. Yet, they are no replacement for live chat, a friendly phone voice (even if in an odd dialect) or onsite repair.
So what can we do? Crowdsource customer service? Saddle up the Mechanical Turk? Or just grab a seat until your number is called eventually, hopefully, any day now? I lived without Facebook for three weeks, and for all my whining it wasn't so bad. Granted, 300 million Facebook fans can't all be patient, and you hear the growls whenever Gmail fails (rare) and Twitter whales (set your watch). That, and patience is a hard virtue to come by in the Twitter era.
My advice to those suffering through this or a similar outage: relax, this too shall pass, have a backup plan and move on with your life. It's what led me to start this blog. Thanks, Facebook! I think?
On a semi-related note, I just started working out five days a week, so I'll give those Gymfu apps a shot. Provided it doesn't get me booted again, I may even link my Gymfu and Facebook accounts. Though watch out, Gymfu: if something breaks, I'm putting your customer service through the paces.
* Hat tip to Steve Rubel for the repost.
Facebook users that are lucky enough not to have 
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