twittering their way to a new customer service experience

Well, it didn't take too long: businesses are now hiring twitterers to be their social media mavens. The New York Times reported that companies as disparate as Napa wineries, Comcast, and GM are hiring so-called "social media specialists to serve as a 24-7 connection between company and consumer.

Such a position could be a new extension of customer service - troubleshooting ASAP. Or it could be seen as promotion. Likely, it's a mixture of both. By having a specialist dedicated to monitoring tweets at all times, the company paints itself as responsive, up-to-date - and perhaps even human. Says a woman who was just hired to be the Twitter specialist for Southwest Airlines, an airline with an unconventional culture,

At Southwest, a company known for its offbeat sensibility, that story can be as personal as she wants. That means tweeting about the sunburn she got on a photo shoot one recent afternoon. Or responding “yes” to a man who once asked, “Am I the only person who thinks Southwest is overrated?” Ms. Day added: “I have a lot of people Twittering about the celebrities they see on flights. I love celebrity gossip, so I get pretty excited.” A case in point? “Someone just saw Vanessa Hudgens,” she said with a giggle.

Critics point to the limitations of Twitter - its 140 character format doesn't lend well to solving complex problems that customers may have. Another danger: the marketing chiefs may be promoting this social media specialism - but not everyone may be on board.

Comcast has been experimenting with hiring people to address their customers' concerns over Twitter. But as some have reported, not even the regular customer service representatives are aware of the project, let alone what this new dimension means for their services.

"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!"

She asked to be transferred to a supervisor, at which point she was told, "Your bill clearly states how to contact us and that [Twitter] is not an approved method."

Still, Comcast can't be completely faulted - even before the Twitter craze really took off in the mainstream retail sector at the end of 2008, the Consumerist blog reported that Comcast had hired a man named Frank Eliason to monitor blog and twitter comments about Comcast and reach out directly to the commenters to ask how he could help. Eliason didn't just read Twitter streams - he trawled small anonymous, personal blogs and responded to individual comments under the handle "comcast_cares." In reaching out to angry commenters, Eliason surprised some of the disgruntled customers who thought they were venting essentially to themselves in the vast echo chamber of the blogosphere:

Lyza Gardner, a vice president at a Web development company in Portland, Ore., used Twitter to vent about a $183 cable bill last month. (The bill was prorated for almost two months of service.) Her comment — “very angry at Comcast” — set off Mr. Eliason’s search tool, prompting him to type outhis typical reply: “Can I help?” The response caught Ms. Gardner off guard.

“It’s one thing to spit vitriol about a company when they can’t hear you,” she said in an interview. It’s another, she said, when the company replies. “I immediately backed down and softened my tone when I knew I was talking to a real person.”

At the time when Frank Eliason first began wading into people's personal blogs to ask them how he could improve their customer experience, this kind of outreach was unknown, and seemingly invasive - someone even constructed a blog called “Comcast Is Watching Us.”


It's too soon to say how this uber-customer service will evolve, but it's clear that just knowing someone is out there, possibly listening, could be quite a powerful notion for a consumer to come to terms with. In Frank's own blog, A Time To Be Frank (har har), he discusses how this signals a sea change in the aim of customer service:

Over the past 20 years the key message was self service and limit the relationship building. Things like handle time were implemented to keep calls short and complicated IVR’s were put in place to try to answer questions without an agent. Today the trend is growing to want to talk to Customers, especially those that may leave.