A few days ago I pointed out a few issues I had with Wells Fargo and their presence on Twitter. Namely, that their primary feed appeared to be abandoned and that their customer service feed seemed pretty repetitive and insincere.

Wells Fargo’s Vice President of Social Media Ed Terpening (they have VPs of social media now?) heard my gripe and took to the comments to explain:

As you know, Twitter is a limited domain system (eg, there can only be one twitter.com/welllsfargo), so we felt it was important to claim our trademarked name early on, to prevent our name use by fraudsters That’s why the most recent tweet was to point customers to our pilot channel. We didn’t launch service on @WellsFargo, because use of that name implies expectations that we were not prepared to meet (eg everything about Wells Fargo). Instead, we decided to launch a more limited test channel with a focus on service, @Ask_WellsFargo.

We were one of the first large banks to launch a Twitter page. We refer to it as a test, because we’re only supporting a limited number of products at this time (eg online banking, checking, savings, etc) Wells Fargo is in many different financial businesses (Eg, Insurance, Brokerage, Mortgage, etc), and are not yet prepared to support the full scope of products on Twitter. We hope to, but it will take us some time.

And later …

Thanks to your input, I did just make changes to @WellsFargo bio and tweets, trying to make it clear what we’re doing. The bio was especially off, so I appreciate your bringing that to my attention. I can’t pre-announce any new products, but you can imagine that launching @WellsFargo as a central part of our Twitter strategy is important. It’s just that with a company our size and complexity, I want to ensure we can meet the broad expectations customers will have with that name.

I’m satisfied with Ed’s response, and I’m glad he replied thoughtfully and considerately and took action to fix the issue.

I think many companies can take a lesson from Wells Fargo on this one: Good communication and execution is good customer service. They heard a complaint, informed the customer, and reached out to resolve the issue. Very well done.