I know it’s been a while since I wrote, and for this I apologize- a lot has been going on, and blogging has fallen a bit to the wayside. In the past couple of months, I’ve been really busy working with some great clients, and also moved to a new house- my life is still mostly in boxes, but I’m slowly getting settled in. With moving to a new place has come the inevitable multiple installations for all kinds of services- phone, tv, internet, and so forth. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you already know that I had been having a particular problem getting Comcast internet and TV installed at my new house.
The install process began just about 2 weeks ago, with a standard service call. Now, I don’t know if the tech who came was dumb or just lazy, but he said that he couldn’t complete the install because there was a problem with the cable feed from outside, and so he left without really doing much of anything. My internet connection speed was horrible, and there was no TV.
I tried resolving this with a few phone calls to Comcast, who kept assuring me they were investigating, but they were telling me it would take weeks to get my service installed. This, as you can imagine, was completely unacceptable to me.
So I started tweeting (posting on Twitter) about my poor installation experience- and what resulted demonstrates the power of social media.
So I began tweeting about this a couple weeks ago- and within two tweets, using #comcast (where the # symbol helps group conversations on similar topics), I got followed by a Comcast representative out of Philadelphia. Through a series of tweets, I was able to outline my problem- that I didn’t have adequate service, had too long a window for service completion, and was being charged for services I didn’t even have. This Comcast representative worked with me to get a credit on my bill, and, eventually, to get my service request expedited. All my service finally went in today, after 13 days.
Now, of course, 13 days is still too long to do this kind of install, but I am sure the timeline would have been longer if I hadn’t started posting about this issue on Twitter. The things that Comcast did right in this situation was to be monitoring Twitter for mentions of their company, and to reach out just as soon as my complaints came through. The representative did follow up consistently and was able to exert some pressure on my local Comcast office to get my service installed.
All companies should be monitoring social media and use it as a medium to improve customer service and customer experience. By doing so, theyll be able to reduce the intensity of customer dissatisfaction and take a very public stance to make things right.
For the consumer, social media represents a powerful way to get your message directly to someone who might be able to help. Many of the large companies monitor sites like Twitter; if you’re having a customer service gap, try tweeting about it to get your problem solved more quickly.
