Companies looking to social customer service post-holiday

According to Marketing Vox, many companies are relying on social media tools to accommodate the questions of the individuals using the tool for such questions as return policies. Companies such as Comcast, Dell, Southwest, and AT&T are fully using it as a customers service tool.

What do you think of companies using Twitter as a customer service tool? Have you had a pleasant experience as a customer using these tools? One interesting fact in the article was that customers who do use these social media tools for assistance expect a higher level of service. Read the article here.

NACCM 2009: Turn Your Enemies into Raging Fans: The Critical Imperatives to Listening Online

A website called “Comcast Must Die” was one of the reasons Comcast took a more active role in reaching out to their unhappy customers. Frank Eliason, Director of Digital Care, National Customer Operations with Comcast, says this website was one of the reasons they started actively engaging in social media. They began by looking at blog site comments about their brand and let these customers know they were listening.

Eliason and his team of 11 are assigned the task of managing Comcast’s social media strategy. The company has set up both internal and external strategies to listen to customers. Eliason involved a variety of departments at Comcast to participate in listening and sharing customer stories, including Marketing, Public Relations, Customer Service and Human Resource departments. According to Eliason, this strategy has enabled Comcast to apply this information and change processes for the good in all areas of the company.

They didn’t start out that way. Eliason shares that Comcast had to learn to move away from being a product-focused company to one that is experienced-focused. It’s easy to track numbers and data to measure your effectiveness says Eliason. But you cannot change your organization by looking at only the numbers. Service people know that the customer experience and customer stories count.

With respects to blogs, Comcast takes the approach of reaching out to customers one-to-one if possible. They will first seek to call the customer and have a conversation. According to Eliason, the surprise factor is high, a two-way conversation is facilitated, and customers feel special. If they can’t reach them by phone, they try email or respond directly by posting comments on the blog site.

Eliason’s advice was similar to many other speakers today. That advice was to start listening to conversations. Search your brand name on Twitter. Don’t hold back, reach out and ask “can I help?” Know which forums your customers are hanging out on. Every customer is an influencer on your brand says Eliason. Listening and engaging are more important than ever in growing your brand.

Comcast, Twitter, and Customer Service

There has been quite a bit of buzz about how Comcast is reaching out and providing service for those customers who tweet about their problems with Comcast's services. However, and interesting article at The Industry Standard about how the program is still taking off, and some customer service reps aren't even aware there is a division of representatives that are contacting customers via Twitter.

"I spoke to an...employee who berated me for not contacting them sooner. I explained that I had done so, most recently via Twitter and that's when everything got bizarre," John told The Industry Standard. "He said he had never heard of it...I pointed out that I've gone through the cycle of reporting it...but because I had used Twitter...he indicated that they didn't really count!"

How would you take care of this problem in your company?

We're all Twittering (Everyone's Doing It)

In July, we posted about the role of “digital care manager,” a position Mr. Eliason from Comcast Cable filled in order to proactively search for complaints and problems in twitter. Since that time, several other companies have joined the bandwagon and are now doing the same. The brightkit blog has posted a huge list of all the companies that now use twitter to track what their customers are saying about them in real time. Here are companies that already have their own twitter pages Southwest Airlines, Dell Computers, Comcast, Starbucks, Jet Blue, Home Depot, Whole Foods, H&R Block, Zappos, Kodak, General Motors, Pandora. And the list goes on for companies that have also responded to problems and complaints on twitter.

Has your company joined the revolution?

Using Twitter for Customer Service

We’ve posted a while ago about how Twitter has made “customer service proactive rather than reactive.” This morning I came across this post from Search Engine Guide in which Paul Jahn reminds us that businesses, especially those who have e-commerce sites, should be using Twitter as a customer service tool.

Customer service reps can simply do a quick search on Twitter for their company to see what people are saying about them. The result, reps will find either good feedback or bad feedback. Representatives can go above and beyond by thanking happy customers and help unhappy customers using Twitter as a medium. Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Frank at Comcast, and many others are just a few examples of people who have used Twitter to improve customer service practices within their company.

Cable Customer Service

In this previous post we had discussed a new position that had been created by Comcast called "digital care manager" whose responsibility was to manage customer service through new media methods. This latest news report, however, gives no indication that customer service is looking up for the cable industry. As the article states, cable customer satisfaction score is 60 out of 100 with 70% of respondents citing that they would have no qualms about jumping to a competitor. The article also reports that:

"the industry average was was weighed down by the scores of Comcast Corp. (58) and Charter Communications Inc. (51)."

In addition to the threat of changing to competitors Customers also cited, that they would

"dump cable, given the chance, because of poor customer service."

Social Media Revolutionizing Customer Service?

Recently we posted on our blog about customer service at Comcast. This week we decided to take a slightly different slant and discuss what some other companies are doing as well as find out if the next step in the evolution of customer services is being proactive instead of reactive by utilizing social media. In this NY Times article, and as previously mentioned on our blog, Comcast has created a new position in their company called “digital care manager”. This new role was taken over by Mr. Eliason, and has since expanded to a staff of seven expected to grow to ten. As Brian D. Solis, from FutureWorks a public relations firm, mentioned, Comcast is

“taking what used to be an inbound call center and turning it into an outbound form of customer relations”

When I checked another of the companies mentioned by the NY Times article, Southwest Air, I noticed that on their twitter page they have 2,088 followers. Apparently, they are also not only relying on people talking back to them, but also going out and actively seeking people who have twitterd about them. In fact this blog post recounts one individual’s account of how Southwest Air proactively responded to their twitter comments rather than simply relying on an inbound call center.

Whole Foods Market is going one step further and rewarding consumers who twitter about them by having a drawing where once a week one lucky individual will receive a $25 Whole Foods Market Card as announced in their company blog.

With more and more companies starting to use social media as not just a marketing tool, but as another step in the evolution of customer service it will be interesting to see how many other roles such as “digital care manager” will be created. Also, it will be interesting to see what percentage of companies migrate away from the use of call centers and begin instead to capitalize on the social media revolution.

Are your organizations taking these extra steps? Do you think that soon this will be the norm in customer service, and what the industry standard will become?

Twitter Acting as Complementary Customer Service

Last night, on World News Tonight with Charles Gipson, a story about Twitter aired. Read the news report here. Tracey Louise Wallace worked from home, and woke up Monday morning to no cable, internet or phone. After speaking with customer service representatives at Comcast, she was informed they’d fix her services Thursday. After the experience, she twittered. Comcast has a team that sorts through social media sites looking for complaints. Frank Eliason, leader of that team, found her complaint and began to track her down. After finding her Twitter page, work webpage, and business partner, he was able to contact Tracey directly. Her services were back up by 5:00 Monday evening.

Customer care is growing as we see the internet grow in old ways. It’s no longer enough to expect customers to sit for thirty minutes on hold before they speak with a customer care representative. Comcast is just one of the many companies monitoring what’s being said about them on the internet. Is your company doing this? How are you seeing this affect your customer service?