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- Tesla is hiring an “Energy Customer Support Specialist” to help with the customer service.
- In particular, the role calls for someone to “address social media escalations directed at” CEO Elon Musk.
- Musk is well known for personally fielding customer complaints from his Twitter account.
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Despite reportedly no longer having a PR department to field questions from reporters, it looks like Tesla is hiring someone to, in part, take some of the social media brunt directed at Elon Musk.
The job listing, tagged under “Sales and Customer Support,” is for a remote Energy Customer Support Specialist full-time position.
“Tesla Energy Support Specialists handle a variety of customer issues while delivering on world class customer service,” the listing reads. “The role of a specialist is to resolve or escalate complaints through appropriate channels and address social media escalations directed at the CEO with critical thinking.”
Musk is known for his noisy Twitter presence. To his 42.6 million followers, Musk often tweets out product updates, opinions on Tesla stock prices, hot takes, and responses to customers regarding their Tesla products.
It’s unclear whether this new position will take some of those duties away from Musk or merely supplement his posts, as well as if similar roles already exist in the company, which accounts these customer support specialists will post from, and what spurred the need for this role. A verified “Tesla Support” account joined Twitter in June 2016 but has no tweets as of this writing.
Insider has reached out to Tesla for clarification, though it's unlikely we will receive a response given the apparent lack of a PR department.
The open position was first noticed by Jay Boller on Twitter.
—Jay Boller (@jaymboller) January 19, 2021
Musk's willingness to engage openly and frequently with customers has earned him a rabid following from both Tesla owners and non-owners alike. And because he constantly tweets out his and his company's stance on issues, journalists were often referred back to Musk's tweets by PR representatives when questioned for clarification. In this sense, the PR department became redundant when anyone could just check his timeline.
More likely, however, it seems this new role will involve actively scouring social media for customer complaints and resolving them, since people are now used to tweeting directly at Musk when they have a problem. As of this writing, the official Tesla Twitter account does not appear to respond to customer concerns.
While it's unclear whether this new specialist will post from a company account or elsewhere, more and more companies have in recent years fielded teams of customer relations specialists who address customer concerns on social media. Similar to the currently vacant Tesla Support account, companies like FedEx and Amazon have dedicated Twitter handles through which to interact with customers.
You can view the Tesla job listing here. Qualifications include a good internet connection, a quiet place to work, at least one year of call center experience, and being receptive to constructive feedback.