comcast twitter

A Bloomberg news report yesterday talks about how Comcast has risen in customer-satisfaction ratings because it is using twitter to deal with dissatisfied customers. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Comcast’s rating rose 9 percent in the first quarter, the largest gain among cable and satellite providers.

Comcast has always had an incredibly bad reputation for horrible service, for 3 of the past 6 years, Comcast tied for the worst place in the index. Now it’s been trying to climb its way out of the hole by proactively dealing with customers using communication channels like Twitter. Here’s how Comcast uses Twitter:

Comcast employs 10 people to monitor Twitter, a site where users can post 140-character messages, or “tweets.” The representatives search for keywords “Comcast” or, occasionally, “Comcrap” to find customers who mention service complaints they can address, said Frank Eliason, Comcast’s director of digital care.

“Twitter allows us to communicate with our customers where they already are — they don’t have to pick up the phone or write an e-mail,” Eliason said. “I encourage my team to use their real names and pictures, not the Comcast logo, so we develop personal relationships with them.”

The truth is Comcast has been using Twitter to deal with customer complaints for a long time, perhaps more than a year now:

When C.C. Chapman noticed a blemish in his high-definition television’s reception during the NBA playoffs recently, he blasted a quick gripe about Comcast into the online ether, using the social network Twitter. Minutes later, a Twitter user named ComcastCares responded, and within 24 hours, a technician was at Chapman’s house in Milford to fix the problem.

“I was so floored,” said Chapman, who runs a digital marketing agency and advises companies to do what he experienced with Comcast – listen to what customers are saying about them online and respond. “When it actually happened to me, it blew me away,” he said.

@comcastcares is the Twitter account used by Frank Eliason, the ‘director of digital care’ for Comcast. While Comcast’s improvement in customer-satisfaction ratings can’t be all attributed to their use of Twitter, it does show how important Twitter is becoming as a platform to contact customers and improve their perception of your brand. Businesses should do well to take note.

Liked this post? Subscribe to my blog feed or follow me on Twitter!

More articles about Twitter:

  1. Twisten.fm Helps You Discover New Music with Twitter
  2. Twickie Helps to Export Your Twitter Follower Replies
  3. Refollow Helps You Bulk Manage Your Twitter Network
  4. Ashton Kutcher’s 1 Million Twitter Followers: Yes, its a PR Stunt.
  5. Twitter May Start Charging Brands for Commercial Accounts

Filed under: Twitter for business