When my gas company messed up the billing of my account I had to phone them. I was on the phone, in a queue, for half an hour before anyone spoke to me. Funnily enough, I was massively frustrated. Even though the problem was soon fixed I was left with a negative impression of the company. When we have problems with a company’s product or service we’re used to having to go to them. Isn’t it time they started coming to us?
Recently I posted a message on Twitter that I’d signed up to Qik and was looking forward to using it. Within two hours Jane Fu of Qik’s customer support team had started following me on Twitter. A few days later, again on Twitter, I criticised something that annoyed me about Six Apart’s Typepad blogging service. In no time at all Six Apart’s Twitter account was following me. Then a couple of days ago, once more on Twitter, I commented on how easy it is to build widgets with SproutBuilder. Later that day, Rebecca Benham of Sprout began following me. Spotting a pattern here?
Modern internet-based companies have cottoned on to the fact that these days it’s very easy to have a direct conversation with their customers. Twitter search engines like Tweetscan allow you to discover who’s talking about you and allows you to talk straight back to them. It truly is a fantastic way of getting a proper two-way dialogue going.
Of course, it’s easy to get wrong. If any of the people I’ve mentioned above began spamming their followers with product news every day their follower numbers would dwindle quicker than Fake Richard Dawkins’. The trick to doing this successfully is to offer the occasional bit of gossip (”After such long time of approving users, I still feel same excited when I watch folks doing their first Qik stream, they all like OH !!^_^^” for example) while simply getting on with answering users’ questions.
It’s such an effective model that 10 Downing Street got in on the act earlier this year. Not only do they post updates on what the Prime Minister’s up to, they also answer voters’ questions. If that’s not democracy in action I don’t know what is.
Big business has been quick to embrace Social Media but so often they fail to catch on to how powerful it is. Setting up a Facebook or Myspace page for a brand is fine but that’s just another form of advertising. I’d like to see more companies having an active conversation.
I’m not just talking about lifestyle brands like Nike or Coca-Cola either – let’s see utility companies like British Gas or Powergen getting on Twitter. These are the companies that suffer worst from angry customers. A straight talking representative on Twitter might be just what they need.
They need to get someone in their customer service operations to open an account in their own name (*not* the company name – that keeps up the wall between customer and business). This person can then scan Twitter for mentions of their company and jump in to support the brand. It’s not spamming as the beauty of Twitter is users don’t have to get any information they don’t want, they simply ‘unfollow’ anyone who’s annoying them.
Don’t tell me people won’t want to follow British Gas. Sure, they’re hardly a ‘cool brand’ people want to be associated with, but I think people will be impressed by the proactive customer service. If it’s good enough for 10 Downing Street then it can surely work for other seemingly stuffy organisations. Okay, not all problems can be solved via Twitter. It’s not the right place to be discussing individual customer accounts, but wider issues or complaints could be dealt with in a fantastically efficient way.
It’s not just Twitter either. These companies need to be scanning blogs. When I posted my piece about BBC iPlayer 2.0 someone at the BBC had read it within an hour. Vodafone have a ‘Forum Intervention Team’ who scan internet forums and blogs for customer problems so they can step in and fix them. It’s an impressive operation and if a big company like Vodafone can do it then let’s hope other companies follow suit soon.
