Social Media, Customer Service & Comcast

I’m still here in Las Vegas at IQPC Call Center Week and I was thrilled to see Frank Eliason, Sr. Director of National Customer Operations at Comcast, on the agenda for this morning’s keynote. BusinessWeek has called Eliason “the most famous customer service manager in the U.S., possibly in the world.” Eliason is a pioneer, he was one of the first to use Twitter (and other social media outlets) as a channel for customer service.

As I settled into my seat Eliason asked the audience, do you think social media is a fad? Surprisingly, quite a few people raised their hands. Eliason, of course, disagrees; he claims social media is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate and that Twitter changed the culture of cable giant Comcast. To prove his point he shared one of my favorite YouTube videos: Socialnomics, the Social Media Revolution. The video, set to hip house music, flashes stats that wowed the audience, including:

• If Facebook was a country, it would be the 4th largest after the US
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool for recruiting employees
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations; only 14% trust advertisements

Eliason shared a few Comcast anecdotes including a story about a man who started a web site called Comcast Must Die. It was their customer’s use of social media to air grievances that really started to shake up the company and drive change. The first step, Eliason explained, is to actually admit that the customer experience you are currently providing is bad, or at the very least not good. The next step is changing the company culture, a huge endeavor to say the least. Eliason said Comcast focused on human connections, transparency and honesty. As a matter of fact, the Comcast social media policy includes 3 simple principles:

• Be nice
• Be honest and transparent
• Don’t share proprietary information

Monitoring social media allows Comcast to be proactive with its service, but it also gives the company an opportunity to identify problems and fix them before they become monolithic customer disasters and costs thousands and in some cases millions of dollars.

Here are some highlights from Eliason’s keynote; you will hear great examples of transparency and proactive service using social media.