Best Comcast Twitter Observations

I asked the class to walk a couple steps in Comcast's shoes and observe what their social media department must contend with on a day to day basis. There were a lot of good points brought up by those of you who completed this assignment. Here are my favorite two response from the class (both of which received some extra credit points):

From Danielle M:

I was actually very inspired the articles this week on Twitter for customer service. As someone that is fairly hesitant to whole idea of Twitter, I see a great deal of value to systems that many companies such as Comcast have implemented. However, when I actually started to monitor the keyword word Comcast, I saw tweets that were 90% negative. Comcast sucks was only more direct ranting, versus the comments being made with the keyword Comcast. Out of curiosity, I started to follow ComcastCares. It was only in ComcastCares that I saw a Comcast employee communicating with users to provide customer service. There seemed to be a stream of mentions, all hoping to grab the attention of @ComcastWill. I eventually did see other Comcast employees on, trying feverishly to keep up with angry tweets but I felt like some of the initial novelty of the idea has made way for unrealistic customer expectations. At this point, it seems as though the resources are not in place to handle all of the noise that is coming their way. This only perpetuates the negative feelings that were initially reserved for ridiculously long phone calls spent on hold, only to be connected to someone in another country. I think at this point Comcast needs to start reevaluating its customer service plan. If the original purpose was to listen and help where they are able, the sheer volume of tweets in their direction is seriously threatening this.

From Bonnie S:

Being on the receiving end of Comcast’s poor customer service and switching to ATT U-Verse because of this fact, I have total sympathy with the people Tweeting about Comcast’s lack of caring. When I read the articles praising Comcast’s alleged caring about their customers, my subconscious was saying, “I doubt they’ve changed.” From what I’ve seen in the Tweets on Monitter, my subconscious is 100% correct. Although, many of the Tweets are just ranting and raving with no clear or specific complaint, there are many Tweets regarding the technological services, as well as, the phone demeanor of the people answering the phone at Comcast. That was one of the main issues I had with Comcast. The people they hire to answer the phone are completely indifferent and lack knowledge of Comcast’s services. Twitter is effective to a point, but still impersonal. I would simply double the amount of people checking the Twitterfeed, and make some employees specialize in specific issues. Comcast can afford it. Their greed is getting in the way of excellent customer service. Comcast needs to get the moths out of their pockets and hire some more good people.