The Comcast Twitter attack
Earlier this week, prominent blogger Michael Arrington lashed out on Comcast after his service went down. Then something happened that I’ve never seen before.
Michael posted his frustrations on Twitter, a microblogging service that does what it sounds like it should do–enables blogging–but is limited to 140 characters and can be posted to via the web and SMS message. Twitter is commonly used to share quips and aha moments, especially those in the web’s public eye (like Arrington). He twittered:
Then, after 36 frustrating hours of downtime, many calls to Comcast’s customer service, who had kept him on hold for 30 minutes at a time and misinformed him that they were experiencing a California-wide outage (he had visited a nearby friend’s home whose Comcast service was functioning perfectly), he received a call. On the other end was a Comcast executive in Philadelphia who, claiming that the company monitors Twitter and blogs, sent a team out to his home to immediately fix his service.
In just a matter of minutes, a wildfire had erupted and been extinguished, thanks to Comcast’s reactive efforts.
The fire burning:
And finally:
In his follow up post on TechCrunch, Arrington then declares Twitter “an early stage warning system for brands and companies” and instructs readers to “skip the hold time on their customer service line and go on the attack at Twitter instead.” But Arrington is dead wrong, Twitter and the blogosphere are late stage warning systems. Sure, by following Twitter, Comcast was able to intervene before Arrington and his angry mob had followed through on their threats. But had Comcast proactively engaged in a dialog with its consumers, its failure to meet customer service expectations would have been made clear years ago (check out this YouTube video for one story).
It is natural to assume that someone with as powerful a voice as Arrington would expect companies to monitor and respond to his rants, but for the rest of us without 700,000 RSS subscribers and 12,000 Twitter followers? Reactive communication is not the answer.
Update: Comcast is actively participating in conversations with consumers via Twitter. This definitely doesn’t scale but is very interesting to watch unfold.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Wait, Ryan, I’m confused. You’ve never seen Arrington post his frustrations on Twitter? Dude, where’ve you been?
Seriously, I agree that companies need to be proactive on this stuff, and Comcast’s traditional stance has been terrible. Still, finding a problem, addressing it before it blows up AND getting a formerly disgruntled customer to speak well of you solution is no mean feat. Being proactive is the target. But reacting quickly to defuse a bad situation is equally important. Fail at either consistently and you’re dead.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
This might surprise you, but I agree. The key is getting it right during the first interaction. We are working to improve the service we provide to our valued Customers. One of the ways we are improving is listening to our Customers through a variety of mediums, including during the call, in person and on the net. This is leading to many improvements. Some of what we are hearing is discussed on the following URL
http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/RickGRoadTrip.html
Here is a link to some improvement in progress
http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/customercare.html
But back to your original premise, the best early warning systems is on the calls themselves. I would list twitter a close second!!!
And Tim I agree with your points too! If you have a problem the key is to fix it fast!
Thank you!
Frank Eliason