Telecommunications, Twitter and Customer Support

Twitter search provides the option (or obligation) to reach out to customers that reference the company or brand. But what role does, or can, twitter play for telecommunication companies?

Telecommunication Twitter came to the forefront when Comcast embraced it to offer support pro-actively. @Comcastcares, or Frank Elliason, and his 12-15 team members have been pioneers and have generated a tremendous amount of positive (and lately a little negative) publicity for the company. Their philosophy is simple, search for any mention of Comcast and reach out to that person. @Comcastcares alone has 32,000 followers, which Frank has been very careful not to exploit with marketing promotions.

This Twitter model has grown in acceptance with companies providing an outreach support function and a separate marketing twitter presence (comcastdotnet for Comcast). Charter Communications with @UMattertoCharter and team have followed the blueprint since the beginning of the year and Verizon, after a test period have launched @VerizonSupport. AT&T (@attcustomercare), Qwest (@TalktoQwest), DirecTv (@DirecTV) and Dish (@dishnetwork) all have Twitter support functions.

So what are some of considerations when considering and managing Twitter Support?

1. Volume – how successful can you afford to be? The major volume will continue to be through the call center; how many staff can, and should be, employed? The ballpark activity is less than 1 in a 1000 compared to the call center.
2. Staff Skills – Twitter support has tended to be handled by highly skilled staff with a greater degree of authority and independence – as an example, @comcastcares is a Senior Director with the company, well above the typical support pay-grade. This may be needed in the early adopter period but how well can that scale?
3. Integration – A customer interacts on Twitter but follows up through the call center (Twitter support is not 24×7 in general). Is the Twitter dialog entered into the customer record? Support needs to be transparent to the customer, yet Twitter and CRM currently are not integrated.
4. Privacy – Twitter is really a bad medium to help someone; it is public and limited to 140 characters. Most often twitter support needs to ask a customer to follow them to enable direct and private messages (DM) to be sent – hence large follower counts. Very often customers are provided a telephone number to continue the dialog so Twitter is a temporary communication method.
5. Social Media Creep – Twitter is just one method to reach out to customers. Once you have a social media team, what scope can they handle? The Charter team, as an example, has responsibility for Twitter, 3 independent forums and customer messages on the company Facebook page. Are social media outposts going to grow? Of course, so how do you choose where to be?
6. Measurement – looking for problems can be hard to measure as it depends on how hard you look. Some tests suggest that less than 1 in 3 tweets mentioning Comcast currently receive a response. Many companies have multiple brand names – should you look for all brands or wait for customers to send a message to the support twitter identity?

Brand and Personality

A major consideration concerns the image and brand on Twitter. Is this a corporate or personal brand? Social Media started life as a very personal one to one medium; that approach has been respected by early corporate users. @comcastcares uses Twitter (not excessively) to send messages about his activities and about his family and the avatar is a picture of Frank, not the Comcast logo – a recent message was as follows:

 

 

Denver Tweet Up Tonight at 8:00 at the Hyatt for CTAM Meet in Lobby. I will probably get there around 7 (nothing better to do!

The rationale is that social media is all about people connecting with people. Being sent an unsolicited ‘tweet’ by an anonymous corporate body might be deemed to be off-putting and come across as ‘big brother’ watching you. The most common arguments against this approach are that when customers have a problem, they are not looking for a relationship, they just want an answer to a question; multiple twitter identities makes it hard to decide who to send the message to – should it go to @comcastcares, @comcastbonnie, @comcastmark etc.

Customer want to be sure they are communicating with the company and the logo or brand is the easiest way to show this. Verizon has taken this more corporate approach using a single Twitter identity with no personal information. Verizon are very new to the game so this might change.

The Comcast ‘personal’ approach is the most prevalent in the industry to date. A hybrid approach is a clear personal approach but using the company logo. Qwest is a good example of this hybrid approach.

Twitter is likely to be a growing opportunity or problem, depending on your viewpoint. Recent announcements by Google and Microsoft that bring Twitter messages into search engine results make Twitter messages that degree more visible and therefore demanding more attention. We will keep an eye on developments in the online telecommunications space including social media.