Twitter Comcast “Case Study”

 

One of my colleagues, Greg, told me about this story. It’s an old story about turning around a disgruntled customer using new media–Twitter! (Note: Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows users to send short blog posts of 140 characters or less to other users that follow their micro-blog.)

One Twitter user who just happened to run his own marketing blog (C.C. Chapman, Managing the Gray) was “Tweeting” about the quality of his HD picture on Comcast during a Boston Celtics game. Shortly after his micro-rant, a Comcast service professional sent him a message on Twitter asking him how he could help fix his HD reception.

So Comcast was able to turn a disgruntled customer around who just happens to run his own blog.  And the old rule about a disgruntled customer telling 9 people and a happy customer telling 5 people got magnified by about 100, and C.C. Chapman tells hundreds of people about how Comcast is using Twitter to provide delightful customer service.

Why do you think Comcast would do something like that? Well if you remember correctly, Comcast was on the other side of new media a couple of years ago when they sent a Comcast technician out to a customer’s house, and the technician fell asleep on the couch waiting to talk to another Comcast technician to troubleshoot the problem. The customer filmed the sleeping technician, posted the video to YouTube, and it was viewed over 1 million times. Comcast used that as a motivator to embrace new media to improve its service and image.