With 1.5 million posts under its belt, the Apple Support Twitter (X) account has been helping out customers and potential buyers for years. Now, a new report claims that automated responses and custom replies will entirely stop as of October this year.
This report, from MacRumors, claims that Apple’s account on the platform formerly known as Twitter will no longer provide human responses to DMs sent to the account and that the company won’t respond to comments in the Apple Support Community. Customers will instead be redirected to contact Apple support services via phone. Alongside this, you’ll no longer be able to get assistance from the comments section of their Apple Support YouTube channel.
A different kind of support
Given this will be just under a month after this year’s Apple Event and a week or two after the launch of the iPhone 15 line, this could come as a big blow for users who have previously turned to Apple’s social channels for help and advice. Apple is instead further committing to different forms of support, hoping that consumers will get the assistance they need in support calls, forums, and instructional videos and posts on X.
Sadly, there is a human cost to this, as it means some jobs at Apple no longer exist. In response to the changes, many community and support roles will be removed and Apple has reportedly encouraged those affected to apply for other roles within the company. Those who don’t want to or can’t do a different job within Apple have been encouraged to look elsewhere for employment.
Those who will stay in a support role will be trained to do so via the phone as phone support will likely get an increase of funding and employees to deal with the influx of customers as a result of this change.
Sources have reported to MacRumors that Apple believes customers prefer phone support. This likely seems down to the fact that customers can get immediate support once through to a human being. With thousands of messages a day, it seems like a challenging prospect for a community specialist to get through all the DMs they might receive.
Apple has not given any official statement on the validity of these claims.
