Customer service boldly going where competitors dare not go

March 23, 2010

Recent message exchanges with a major mobile phone company have made me think about the role Twitter plays in establishing, building and maintaining customer relationships. Such a short message by nature needs to be succinct and to the point, not something that the majority of big companies have managed in their comms for many years.

This particular mobile phone company picked up on my disgruntled whinge about poor 3G signal, not in the highlands of Scotland but in a part of the country where any mobile phone user would surely expect to have the strongest fastest connection available – especially given the networks 3G maps that Ofcom has on its site. I was quite impressed with the request for more information and the suggestion that this company – not my provider – would be able to do a better job for me. So I responded.

There have been a few more exchanges since and the negotiations – through just 140 characters or less – has lead to this “other” provider now top of my list for when I can afford to change contracts. Not willing to wholly buy me out of my existing contract at this time was at first a disappointment but then business sense took over and the offer to go halves with me seemed pretty reasonable.

What has been missing though is any form of communication from my current provider. Not even recognition that there could be a problem, let alone recognition that a major competitor is taking over my “first name terms” relationship. In my mind this is a major miss, in Twitter speak #fail.

I am not suggesting that the two companies go into a bidding war over a solitary, slightly disgruntled customer, but where one is taking advantage of this new way to personally interact with a potential client the other is majorly missing a trick. Surely customer relationship management 140 characters at a time makes sense, but knowing when to enter into a conversation and when not to is the key. Here one has just about got it right and the other has missed a trick.

Latest Posts

In B2B social, employee advocacy should not be treated as a “nice to have”. It is one of the clearest opportunities for brands that want to build trust, extend reach, and create more meaningful conversations with the people they are trying to influence. When your people share content, algorithms push…

The social commerce system behind 6x ROAS A 6x ROAS on high-ticket sports equipment is an exceptional result. We saw this first-hand with Motocaddy, where a joined-up approach to social, paid activation and measurement delivered approximately 6x ROAS. With paid social ROAS for sporting goods brands often sitting between 2x…

Why CMOs need to stop treating paid social like a media buy, and start treating it as a commercial system B2B paid social is still being bought like a campaign, but judged like a revenue system. That mismatch is where the frustration starts. The campaign performs on paper, but the…