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John Danenbarger
One of the earliest commercial success stories on Twitter came from Comcast. The company had a reputation for delivering poor customer service. Customers struggled to find agents to speak to and when they did manage to find someone, they often felt that the agent was not listening.
That changed when Frank Eliason, the company’s “Director of Digital Care” opened a Twitter timeline. Whenever anyone complained about Comcast, he shot back a reply asking if he could help.
For Comcast, it was a great thing. Customers began to feel that there was someone listening to them. They felt they could get help easily and Comcast began to rehabilitate its image as a company that could care less.
For other companies though, it has been something of a disaster.
Take a look at the timeline of Dunkin Donuts. Or of Target. Or of Macys. All of those companies have tried to copy Comcast – and come up short. Their timelines are filled with tweets offering email addresses or phone numbers to make a complaint. They read like long lists of apologies for poor service and shoddy products.
They are not bad companies. Dunkin Donuts recently opened its 10,000th store. But if all you had to go on was the corporate timeline you would have to believe that these were firms that had no idea how to serve customers and had nothing good to give them.
That is not just wrong; it is a waste of an opportunity. A corporate timeline should be used to push deals, make product announcements, engage with influencers and drive sales. If it is dominated by apologies for the bad service of individual staff in far-off outlets, it is not fulfilling that role.
There are a couple of alternative approaches to using the main corporate timeline as a customer service outlet.
That is Walmart’s approach. The official timeline lists special offers and links to media initiatives. Complaints about products or service are not answered anywhere. It is a risky approach. A serious complaint that is not addressed could quickly spread across networks. But most issues tend to be fairly minor and Walmart feels big enough to shrug them off.
The alternative approach though is to go back to Comcast. The company operates multiple timelines. Its @comcast account, is relatively inactive. Its @comcastvoices account talks about deals and promotions. And the @comcastcares account is dedicated to dealing with customer complaints and issues. That account is filled with apologies and offers to send technicians. But that is what you would expect to see on a dedicated customer service desk.
However a complaint is addressed, it is picked up and dealt with by @comcastcares, leaving the rest of the social media team free to build the customer base. It is a much smarter system than the one used by Target or Macys, which allows complaints to overwhelm social media promotions.
Usually, you want to make sure that you’re servicing your customers as much as you can. But social media is a public forum and you do not want everyone to see a long line of dissatisfied customers at the front door. There is a reason that retail stores put the complaints department at the back, and there is a reason that smart businesses on social media guide complainants away from their main page.
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