Following Sandra’s blog on Twitter last week (see April 25), I have to concur that Twitter is becoming a powerful communication tool that’s being underestimated and shouldn’t be overlooked. Especially by corporations. I’ve been following the Comcast/Twitter customer satisfaction dissatisfaction story of Michael Arrington (from the influential and highly read blog, TechCrunch) who was one very dissatisfied Comcast customer when his Internet service inexplicably went down for more than 36 hours! Unacceptable.
Arrington’s frustrating customer service phone calls that-get-nowhere with Comcast lead him to tweet and then blog about his frustration. Read it, it’s great.
But if Comcast has not wisened up to improve their customer service department, they have cleverly entered the social media realm and have appointed a specific person to monitor and track the “tweetosphere” and “blogsphere” to see what customers are saying, to communicate with them and take action.
So this CTO (Chief Twitter Officer, I love that term) guy caught Arrington’s tweet and within 20 minutes he got a call from Comcast who sent a team to Arrington’s house to fix his Internet connection. Viola!
How cool. I don’t know about you – I suspect your experiences may be pretty similar – but I have spent hours on many exasperating customer service calls to Verizon, Optimum, HP, Dell (to name a few) with a person who is either not qualified or knowledgeable enough to help me, or there is a communication gap between us, and understanding each other is quite a feat (thanks to the glories of global call center outsourcing). The problem can takes days to get sorted out.
And what d’ya know? Arrington’s story snowballed from a small Twitter tweet into a huge online conversation. Jeff Jarvis from Technorati Buzz Machine blog, the Techmeme blog and all Arrington’s other influential tech buddies picked up on this and, of course, blogged.
The story is also nicely covered in Catharine Taylor’s blog in the SocialMedia Insider.
So, corporations: Take note and prick up your ears, be proactive and jump into the social media world. This just may be the most burgeoning and powerful (and probably the cheapest) tool to:
(a) Communicate with your customers
(b) Mitigate negative PR
(c) Increase your branding
(d) Advertise
(e) Grow your business
(f) Improve customer support and satisfaction
(g) All of the above
Need I say more?
Well, I think I’m gonna be tweeting from now on – good and bad – on my next Verizon/Optimum/HP/Dell experience.
Maybe I’ll finally get some service. Although, granted, I’m not Michael Arrington…
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