Who needs an entire marketing department when Founder & CEO Elon Musk can singlehandedly will the Tesla stock price into the stratosphere and sell its cars using Twitter alone? But it seems as though the market-breaking automaker is now looking to wrangle the newly minted world’s richest person away from further online shenanigans – or at least cut down on potential news headlines – with the announcement that Tesla wants to hire someone who can handle complaints directed to Elon Musk via Twitter and the like. In essence… a human controversy muzzle.
With the official title of ‘Tesla Energy Customer Support Specialist’, as per the job description, this position will involve:
“Handl[ing] a variety of customer issues while delivering on world-class customer service. The role of the specialist is to resolve or escalate complaints through appropriate channels and address social media escalations directed at the CEO with critical thinking.”
Reports indicate ‘Tesla Energy Customer Support Specialists’ will function as an indirect replacement for Tesla’s PR department, which was shut down and cut from the organisation last year; making them the “front line and face of the Tesla brand”.
As you may already know, Elon Musk has something of a history when it comes to directly engaging with customer complaints, queries, and so forth through Twitter (for better or for worse). While this would ordinarily be something to be celebrated in such a prolific CEO, staying as grounded as possible by volunteering to be among the people, Musk is also – how shall we put this delicately – a meme lord who isn’t above shitposting. Which often works against a brand’s desired result, i.e. good public relations.
The most notable event, of course, was the whole “funding secured” incident when Musk falsely claimed he had the necessary capital to take Tesla private at US$420 a share. Soon after, this triggered an SEC investigation and the company was eventually forced to pay a settlement sum of US$40 million.
In any case, if you reckon you could handle the gig, be sure to flick your CV to the Tesla HR department.
