Comcast brings customer service to Twitter

Scott Monty mentioned in an email to me that Comcast has launched a customer service initiative on Twitter. Dubbed “Comcast Cares,” it seems that the effort is aimed at finding people who are tweeting their complaints about Comcast and offering to help. Whoever is leading the effort then engages in conversations with those to whom she or he is reaching out.

Reviewing the 21 pages of tweets from Comcast going back to April 6 reveals a long list of replies to individuals:

As with any company, the words need to be backed up with action, but if Comcast has taken a page from the Dell playbook, this could be an outstanding example of using social media to improve reputation through proactive customer service.

Twitter doesn’t have to be mainstream for this outreach effort to succeed. The word will spread from those who experience it. Using Twitter to seed word-of-mouth by taking genuine care of customers could be a brilliant move by a much maligned company.

1. I thought the latest and greatest in online customer service were forums with categorized questions written by those who’ve had the same problems.  That allowed for novices and experts to find a solution tailored to them.  However, this is even better.  Direct response in a community that’s easy to keep track of.  Customer Service tweets could even act as a daily update for things you should be on the look out for, that is, if you follow that Customer Service twitterer.  What business applications do you think Twitter will lead to that have not already been explored?

   Posted by Brian Block  on  04/14  at  04:29 AM

2. This is a great idea, I hope other ISP’s take a hard look at this.
   And its an easy and free way to help their customers.
   just check out the stats
   Stats
   Following 3,095
   Followers 3,038
   Favorites 3
   Updates 11,572

   I’m sure it will continue to grow as the word gets out.
   I’m going to recommend this to my ISP.
   Thanks for the post.

   Posted by Jason Frovich  on  08/23  at  06:55 PM