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Thank goodness for social media
Blog from DWP Digital ... includes story of how their use of twitter saved a claimant a 16 mile round trip on foot to the jobcentre -
The recent snowy weather really affected some of our sites and our ability to help and serve our customers. There are a number of rural communities in the area, which saw heavy levels of snowfall. From a social media perspective, what was particularly interesting was seeing the increased activity on our social media channels during this time. Customers were using these new services to get answers to queries, help and advice, just as they would normally use a regular channel like phoning or writing to us.
Our first DM arrived at 6:30am with: “I’m walking in from Brixton to Plymouth today for an appointment at 11am. Are you open for business?” As Brixton village to Plymouth is about a 16 mile round trip (nearly 2 hours each way on foot), we were able to quickly respond the latest position and advise that the local Plymouth office was closed due to the snow.
I feel like there’s an angle to this which has somehow slipped the author by…
I feel like there’s an angle to this which has somehow slipped the author by…
indeed - probably the follow up sanction to the pedestrian who knew he’d get sanctioned for not turning up….
how depressing is it that we should think that?
So, has anyone found any of the tweets in question? It says they’re a mix of DMs and mentions. The former would not be public. The latter would be unless the claimants account is a private one, which could be the case but is generally unlikely. It strikes me that few claimants would ever DM an organisation. It’s generally the other way around. You tweet an organisation; they follow you and ask you to DM asap in order to get any unfortunate discussions out of the public domain asap. A job for the Disability New Service perhaps?
One suspects this will turn out like “thank you for sanctioning me” cards.
Well, credit where credit is due. I’m impressed that someone was available to answer the tweet before 9 am so the poor claimant didn’t have to set out.