Twitter saves BT
August 5, 2009 No CommentsIf ever I saw the benefits of social media for a brand it was last night and today via Twitter. I live at the end of a half mile lane in the Sussex countryside (at the moment). Recently some BT engineers were spotted undertaking some work at the bottom of the lane, a few hours later our broadband went down. A stressed phonecall to my neighbour, who is a web designer, revealed that our landline numbers had changed. The BT engineers had somehow got the wires crossed!
From this address we currently run four businesses, two of which are online based, so this obviously caused massive problems. After some heated discussions with BT personnel in a call centre we were promised normal service by the end of play the following day.
Once I had recovered from my anger I decided to test BT’s customer service and, knowing that they were one of the biggest brands to venture onto Twitter, I tweeted my disgust. This is the tweet: “Little rant about the idiots at BT: not only have they cut off our internet but they’ve changed our phone number! So annoyed, not surprised.”
The following day, once I had got my internet back I found this from @BTCare: @TashaHarrison Oh dear this does not sound good at all, Can I help you?
It might have come after the problem was fixed, but it made me feel like they were listening. It also delighted me that I was part of a successful internet marketing strategy by a massive brand.
If anyone ever doubts the power of Twitter and the role it can play in customer service then think about how easy it was for them to make me feel better about their company. It doesn’t take long to monitor the internet and then say a few kind words.
