The internet is littered with stories about regular people getting their offline problems solved after complaining to corporations online.
Heck, we did the same thing in the aftermath of a certain automobile recall last year.
Turns out that corporate tweeters aren’t he only ones saving the day — the District government social media teams are jumping in, too.
Our permit application to park a mobile storage container on city street this weekend mysteriously stalled earlier this week, and all of the lady sparklers efforts ended up in voicemail-laden dead ends.
So, late last night I tweeted to the Districts official Department of Transportation account.
hey, @DDOTDC – we have a POD permit app that’s been stalled/ignored for a week. who can help fix tmrw before it’s delivered this weekend?
By 11:00 pm, I had an email address for the guy behind the twitter account, asking for details on our problem.
By 7:30 am, I was CC’ed on an email from him, forwarding our problem on to a team of people to solve.
By 8:30 am, the lady sparkler got a call on her cell phone from someone from DDOT saying they would clear everything up for us within the hour.
At 9:04, my wife had the permit in her hot little hands.
I don’t know how much of this little bit of awesomeness was caused by the social media phenomenon in general, or the epic person behind @DDOTDC in particular, or about just tunneling through the bureaucracy to find the actual human beings inside.
Either way, whatever is responsible — thank you.