Had I been too harsh? Well, no. I’m a customer, and have been for a long time. A customer deserves to act like a shareholder, even more so – because, after all, we’re not garnering the benefits of owning a chunk in the company and when we’re not even benefiting from the product, we’re just left with our pockets hanging out.

Another nation heard from

I absolve myself of any consumer activist guilt; but the Hot Tub is supposed to be a conversation. It can’t be that without a survey sample that includes the good with the bad. So the question bubbled up: Who’s doing it right? I thought of @comcastcares. Already, it’s a win. Because whether or not this famed “Comcast Twitter guy” lives up to the hype or not, he’s managed to entwine the company’s brand image in with an online presence of heroic repute.

The difference is immediately discernable. @comcastcares is a guy, not an logo. Oh, and he has a name. It’s Frank. I tweeted this morning, on my quest for the online customer service holy grail:

@comcastcares what is the secret to delivering #customerservice by #socialmedia? Why do you guys do it better than some other big cos?

His reply:

Just as I suspected.  Frank Eliason and I corresponded by email about how the Hot Tub’s readers could benefit from his team’s example. He indicated we couldn’t do better than to run his interview with Guy Kawasaki, which ran in the American Express Open Forum earlier this month.

My blog’s tagline is “Aren’t we all just fat men in a tub?” It’s true, but it helps us get in better shape when we can learn from all kinds of examples, good and bad.

This is the original unedited text from Kawasaki’s interview. Enjoy, then in the comments tell us who YOU think is doing it right.

To Tweet and to Serve

Question: How did you get started on Twitter?

Answer:  I started as a Customer Service manager with Comcast September, 2007.  On my fourth day our communications team asked if a member of my team could contact a blogger.  We did, and they were thrilled.  It is amazing the reaction you get when you call a blogger.  People blog to be heard, and when they know someone is listening they are very excited.  We used Google Blogsearch and did this to others over the next few months.  Based on the success we were seeing, I was asked to do more community efforts.  In February, 2008 I became Manager of Digital Care, responsible for Customer interactions on our help forums, other forums on the net and blogs.  I started a newsletter to share the Customer story (social media is a great place for Voice of the Customer).  A VP, Scott Westerman, wrote to me because he loved the newsletter.  He told me to check out Twitter.  Like most people, when I looked at Twitter I was not sure what to think of it, but I saw value, especially due to the real time search.

Question: Exactly how do you use Twitter? (ie, are you searching for “Comcast”? Or “comcast OR Directtv”? what’s only respond to @s? Only respond to Directs?)

Answer:  We use Twitter to help Customers.  We simply search Comcast (and a few variations, that I will leave off here) and respond offering help.  One of my favorite stories involving competitors, is on this post:

http://pistachioconsulting.com/twitter-competition-verizon-comcast/

We do not strive to say things about a competitor, but sometimes they come into our search.  For this one he was having trouble with his box.  Since we use similar hardware, so I provided a way to fix it.  In the end he returned as a Customer.  With everything I have done in social media, this is probably my favorite quote “Eliason initially refrained from lobbying for Kerkvliet’s business, instead offering pointers on how to get his Verizon service working properly. This gesture floored the physician.”

Question: What Twitter tools do you use? (on a computer, phone, iPad, whatever)

Answer:  The best part to social media is there are plenty of tools that you can work with, and many are free.  If you are thinking of listening, you can easily start with Google Blogsearch, Twitter Search and Facebook Search.  You can then progress to some really great tools.  For analysis we use Radian 6 and Nielsen Online, but for day to day work we do use many free tools.  We use Seesmic, Peoplebrowsr, or sometimes the tools listed above.  On my iPhone I prefer Simply Tweet, but I like Seesmic on my Droid.  On the iPad I use Twitterrific.

Question: How many cases do you deal with every day?

Answer:  My digital care team is not structured around number of interactions, but instead how they help us improve the customer experience through all communication channels. The bulk of the work that we handle is actually through email. As a means to obtain account information from customers on blogs, we started our team’s email address (We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com). We do also use it in other social media spaces as necessary (for example when a customer needs more than 140 characters). This creates another communications channel in which we receive about 7,000 emails a month.

My team is responsible for our help forums, which have over 3.5 million page views each month. These are usually people seeking helping from peers. My team moderates our help forums. We also listen in forums throughout the Internet. We even have a private forum called Comcast Direct over at Broadband Reports. This allows Customers that hang out there to get help in a private manner where they already are. Forums in general are about peer helping peer, so typically you will not see us participate in a public manner. Doing so would take away from the community that is there. We will private message if we think we are the best option to help. With all the forums we watch, we review 500 to 1,000 forum entries each day.

We review about 6,000 blog posts each day, with most not having anything to do with Comcast. They show in the search because the blogger has a Comcast.net email address.  We do not exclude them from our search, because we would never want to miss a post in which a customer could use assistance.

Twitter has about 1,500 – 2,000 tweets a day or more. Many of the tweets are not about assistance, but some are. We reach out to 600 – 1,000 people, and we have conversations with about 200 – 300 a day.  We typically only have 1 person on at a time, and we try to cover 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday and Sunday. We see more activity than most companies since we are known for being in the space and spammers like to mention us. Many times when we feel it is spam, our initial response is to email. We know we never hear from them.

Question:  Are your Twitter efforts now your full-time occupation?

Answer:  I am responsible for our community efforts, which include Twitter.  I also manage a number of Customer Feedback channels for Comcast.  As Senior Director of National Customer Service I manage 3 teams for the company, and, as everyone in Customer Service, I act as the advocate for all our Customers.

Question: Do you use ghosts or staff or is it pure Frank?

Answer:  Every tweet from @ComcastCares is me, but I am not out there as much as I used to be.  When we started on Twitter I was out there all hours of the day and night, usually 7 days a week.  Today we have 10 different Twitter ID’s.  Different than many companies, I believe that each ID should represent a person.  I relate this to calls.  You would never answer a phone ‘XYZ company, what do you want?’ So we have team members with ID’s like @Comcastbill and @Comcastbonnie responding to our Customers, including those who tweet me.  I do enjoy being out there, so I Tweet also.  Another difference is I recommend tweeting about other things too.  So we will tweet what we are doing, or interesting information we find.

Question: Does your experience prove that one person on Twitter can make a big impact on a company’s reputation?

Answer:  I think a person, a team, and a website can make all the difference.  Here is a video of Brian Roberts speaking to John Battelle at Web 2.0 this year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q4n9iA2JG4

Question: If Twitter didn’t exist, would, and how would, Comcast resolve the issues that you’re handling with Twitter?

Answer:  We still use the standard communication channels, but I would still have been involved in digital media.  It is a great place to listen to and learn from Customers.

Question: What are the key elements and best practices of providing support via Twitter?

Answer: The key to Twitter is being yourself.  Ultimately the way used by every business will be slightly different for everyone.  If you are a small business, you may be using search to connect with people that may be Customers in the future.  I recommend not doing the hard sell, but instead being the expert and offering assistance.  Allow your background (Twitter page) to do the selling.  For companies like Comcast where Customers may be talking, the key is not jumping into conversation.  If we see someone needs help, we usually do not jump in with the answer.  We might send a tweet that say ‘Can I help?’  What we are doing is throwing the ball in their court.  If they want help, they will come back.  No matter how you choose to use social media, I do recommend listening in all the spaces.  It will help you better understand your Customers and further the relationship with them.

Question: What is the role of Facebook in providing support? Or is Twitter the best platform? Why?

Answer:  Facebook is a place to meet up with people you already know, where Twitter is the space to meet new friends.  This distinction is important, because the reaction when reaching out to people in both spaces will be very different.  Twitter it is much more expected.  Facebook recently opened up search to include status updates, so it acts a lot more like Twitter.  It is a great place to listen because of the size of the community and the limited amount of spam that is there.  We do reach out to people on Facebook, but it is not as often.  If you reach too much to people that you are not friends with, the system will warn or even block you as a spam prevention measure.

Connect with Frank on his blog http://timetobefrank.com or on Twitter http://twitter.com/comcastcares

OK, so this is only really the second in this occasional series. See Number 13: Forgiveness for the first. You’ll notice the irony in the sequence here in a moment.

Whoops, indeed!

I learned a lot from my dad. He built a successful business from scratch with a lot of hard work, long hours, and a boatload of invaluable assistance from my patient, T-crossing mom.  His business delivered a quality product, uncompromising after-sale service and an honest deal every time. However, he also had been blessed with an innate sense of marketing psychology. He bought a small pickup truck and had it stenciled with the company name. He then had the number 11 painted on the side.  He knew he needed his company to seem bigger, more-established, than it was.

Sprint could learn from him, too. Of course, they are a big company. A really big one. As such, they need to take extra care to look like they have their duckies in a row lest they find themselves in the midst of a colossal PR disaster. Like the one they find themselves in this week.

I’ve alluded before to the “the medium is the message” wisdom that’s ingrained into every aspiring advertising writer. If you want to look like a professional company, your advertising medium can’t be tacky, poorly executed, cluttered or insult the reader. Shouldn’t that be the case with the company’s product?

Sprint is a communications company. Their corporate communications platforms should embody a commitment to service, quality and – one would think – uptime.

Since Sunday, it seems, Sprint’s Web site has been down while their IT department busily toils away at an update  ostensibly designed to improve customer service and communication. It’s now Wednesday morning. And the site is STILL DOWN.

I had a little temper tantrum, and tweeted two messages in a row expressing my disdain. The reason I knew about the outage is I received a payment due notice by email. Evidently, collections activity at the company is functioning without a glitch. And I understand a Web outpost has been erected to facilitate new customer sales.

However, my favored method of payment is not working. Do you think Sprint will mind if I wait until their site is up and running and I can take care of the small matter of the fee? Of course, I can always call. However, actually calling Sprint, and talking to one of those associates after navigating the phone queue – well, have you read any Dante?

After years of working his business, my dad eventually didn’t need to try to look bigger, because he was – and on his own merits. Sprint could try to act a little smaller in this case.  Such huberis, Sprint, to not care for every detail of your update and effectively alienate your established customer base!

By the way, my third tweet was an invitation to other cell phone companies that could craft a comparable service plan and buy out the Sprint contract. We’ll see what comes of it. If nothing else, social media offers a therapeutic opportunity to complain about being stepped on by the big guys. I don’t know if the big guys are listening to the little guys – but they should.

Got some spleen of your own to vent? I invite you to do so in the comments. Enjoy!

When: 6 pm: Registration and networking, appetizers, cash bar
6.30 pm: Opening remarks by Michelle Hudson of the News-Press
6.45 pm: Keynote address: Turning Social Media Contacts into Actionable Relationships
7.30 pm:  Executive panel
8.15 pm : Closing Remarks

Where: Holiday Inn Airport at Gulf Coast Town Center

Cost: Free, registration required

Featured speaker: Deborah Shane

Panelists:

Suzanne Boy, Attorney at Henderson Franklin Starnes & Holt, P.A.
Sarah Owen, CEO at Community Cooperative Ministries, Inc.
Dean Piccirillo, Principal and Senior Financial Advisor at HBK Sorce Financial LLC

Moderator:

Pason Gaddis, President and Publisher, Florida Weekly

Event description

Is there room for social media in the boardroom? At the next Social Media Club of Southwest Florida event, discover the opportunities social media provides for professional people in leadership roles.

A recent study by UberCEO found that in the Fortune 100 companies:

* Only 2 CEOs have Twitter accounts
* A mere 13 have LinkedIn profiles
* 81 percent do not have a Facebook profile
* Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog

The surprising lack of tweets in the C suite offers enterprising leaders a chance to differentiate their company by becoming the face of it, even — maybe even especially — if it’s not part of the Fortune elite. However, social media does present that “yet one more thing” to learn and manage, and many executives may have to break down long-existing silos in their corporate culture in the process.

Enjoy an in-depth overview of the time management and implementation issues that face busy professionals who decide to become the public face of their business, as well as the brand loyalty and corporate goodwill social media can facilitate. Explore the objections professional-level employees may have when embarking on a social media campaign, along with best practices and the opportunities for timely customer service intervention.

Keynote address:

Deborah Shane will present “Turning Social Media Contacts into Actionable Relationships”

Social media makes it easy to meet lots of like-minded people. Once you’ve harnessed the power of the social networks to gain all those followers, then what? The point isn’t simply to gain a huge list of online friends. However, many users haven’t learned the all-important next step: bridging the gap between online networking and real-world results. So, how do you turn those contacts into actionable relationships?

Deborah Shane will help us discover the fine art of social media contact conversion. She is a dynamic speaker and professional trainer who devotes her energy to helping professionals realize their full potential. Explore how and why “to put yourself out there, bring value to someone’s day, and get personal!”

Following Deborah’s presentation, stick around for a spirited panel discussion featuring local professionals who are also experts in social media relationship management.

Deborah Shane is owner of Train With Shane. She spent 20 years in broadcast media (radio) in sales, management and training in corporate America with Cox Radio and Clear Channel. In 1994, she began training and mentoring sales professionals both through continuing/adult education programs and broadcast media. She has designed and developed several original sales and professional development curricula. The expression you only come this way one time” has always motivated her to follow her dreams and take some risks along the way. TWS is an expression of all of her skills, passions and gifts. Find her on Twitter at @DeborahShane.

Executive Panel

Suzanne Boy is an Associate at Henderson Franklin, Starnes & Holt, P.A. She concentrates her practice in employment law and is the lead writer of Southwest Florida HR Law & Solutions, Henderson Franklins employment law blog. Suzanne also speaks to businesses and professional groups on various employment matters. In addition to her employment law practice, Suzanne also handles a variety of commercial litigation matters including contract and business disputes, foreclosures and bank-related litigation, landlord-tenant issues, and estate-related litigation. She serves as general counsel for several of her corporate clients. Suzanne also has an active civil appellate practice.

Find her on Twitter @suzanneboy.

Sarah Owen is Chief Executive Officer at Community Cooperative Ministries, Inc., the umbrella agency for The Soup Kitchen, Meals on Wheels, Faith In Action Senior Transportation, Hands & Hearts Montessori Preschool, and two United Way Resource Houses. The agency is dedicated to providing food to the hungry and transforming the lives of those in need through partnerships, collaborations and innovative social service solutions.

Her journey into the non-profit arena came by way of a career in public relations and corporate communications. Sarah has worked in investor relations, public relations and corporate communications for publicly traded companies on the New York Stock Exchange as well as private companies throughout the Southeastern United States.

Find her on Twitter @hungerfighter

Dean Piccirillo is a Principal and Senior Financial Advisor at HBK Sorce Financial LLC. Dean has been practicing for 20 years, working closely with families to help them plan for their long-term goals and with businesses and other institutions to help them establish or enhance retirement plans. He leads HBK Sorces Retirement Plan Unit, working closely with all of the firms corporate clients sponsoring qualified retirement plans. In addition to the Certified Financial Planner certification, Dean also maintains the Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist certification and the Accredited Investment Fiduciary Analyst certification. He was recently named as one of the Top 300 most influential retirement plan advisors in the U.S. by the 401(k) Wire.  Mr. Piccirillo writes online regarding pension and retirement planning matters on his professional blog at www.deanpiccirillo.com.

Find him on Twitter @deanpiccirillo or on his blog at www.deanpiccirillo.com.

Moderator

Pason Gaddis, President and Publisher, Florida Weekly

Pason Gaddis is President and Publisher of Florida Weekly. He is a 15 plus year newspaper advertising sales veteran. Prior to Florida Weekly, he served in a variety of sales and sales management capacities from 1998-2007 with Gannett, Inc. and successfully launched several new newspapers and magazines.

He is heavily involved in several local charities including the American Heart Association along with serving on the board of directors for the Lakes Park Enrichment Foundation, Great Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Press Service.

Florida Weekly on Twitter: @FloridaWeekly

ALTHOUGH THERE IS NO COST AND THIS EVENT IS FREE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, SEATING IS LIMITED AND YOU MUST BE REGISTERED TO ATTEND

A lot of “gurus” would like to tell you the best case scenario. Social media is free, powerful and fun. I couldn’t agree more.

However, it’s not a panacea. It’s not the only ingredient in your marketing apothecary, is it? I certainly hope not. Think of it like an insurance portfolio. You don’t just get one type then say forget it. There’s health, life, auto… Missing one coverage could be disastrous. But that’s between you and your agent to figure out – and in life as in marketing, disasters can be instructive.

In addition to my social media warrior princess gig, I also do some newspaper writing and editing. Recently I had to talk down a reporter who had gotten himself into a sticky place with his editorial subject. His report was just that – a report – and needed some serious reworking. My 11th hour rewrite for the paper didn’t please the freelancer, who had promised his contact a certain tone to his story.

Note to freelancers: Do NOT do this. Your editor will ultimately determine the tone in keeping with his or her editorial guidelines and the publication’s journalistic integrity. Your job stops at submission.

But that’s not my point to this piece. Wait for it…

The reporter’s subject is a marketer who’s brought an ultrapremium luxury item to market and…drum roll…left it to social media buzz to get the word out.

Here’s the truth: leaving it to social media followers to do your marketing for you means you lose a substantial amount of control over your message.

Balancing buzz with other marketing components will help insure your message.

So my advice to that freelancer: If he wants to write what the marketing company behind the product wants him to write, then he’s not a journalist, but a copywriter who has limited input into the creative vision.

My advice to his contact: When you “go viral,” you’re capitalizing on buzz at that point, not necessarily a commitment to product quality.You CAN have both, but that requires careful engineering and concerted marketing portfolio management.

It does strike me as a sort of dark genius on the subject’s part to squeeze all the blood out of his particular social media turnip, then cop a “poor me” attitude with the press. You want profile, you get profile.

Remember “the medium is the message?” This mantra was beaten into me as a young ad copywriter fresh out of college. It was true when Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. Is it as true today as it was then? How does it apply to new media platforms?

By the way, if anyone tries to pass him or herself off as a “guru,” take a good, hard look at the expertise they’re actually bringing to the table. You want substantial marketing chops, not a yogic hermit in a mountaintop cave – unless you’re the Beatles, in which case you probably don’t have to worry much about your buzz.

Intuit isn’t dumb. In fact, they’re freakin’ brilliant.

They’ve got this thing going called the “Love A Local Business” contest. A local business can win a $35,000 grant – a dream for an entrepreneur. I mean, THINK what you could do with that money! All that’s needed is votes from people who know your business. Yes, it’s an unadulterated popularity contest.

My husband does amazing stonework, providing dreamscapes for homeowners and commercial applications. He also does water features and rainwater harvesting. We run the business together. We do a pretty good job. Well, he does an incredible job, and I just try to be a shortcut for him so he can concentrate on what he does best. On the side, I do writing gigs and drop into the Hot Tub whenever I can.

We keep overhead low. It’s just the only way we care to operate – and the only way we could operate in the current economic climate.

So when we come upon an opportunity to get ahead with little or no investment, we jump on it. We entered the contest and immediately canvassed our social media connections.

Like I said, Intuit isn’t dumb. Not only do they provide a custom URL to post in emails and on social networking sites, they provide web site banners and how-to tips for social sharing. Of course, the expected side effect, is with all our canvassing, we’re becoming a bigger name dropper than Hilary Rowland. I never in my life felt compelled to tweet about Intuit. I’ve never once mentioned the company in all my travels in Facebook, LinkedIn and Digg. Except today.

Even more brilliant, Intuit provided us with a site to monitor the comments our fans provide and our current ranking. The more we see happening, the more we think we actually stand a chance and naturally, the more ways we want to find to get the word out about – not merely a contest – an Intuit contest. I even joined networking sites I wasn’t on before. Yeah, like I really need MORE.

I heart Elemental Stone and Waterworks. Please vote for us. Please. No, really.

And consider doing a similar contest for your business. As far as viral marketing, it’s as organic as you can get. And it works.

Faced with the big D, consumers’ pain often translates into traffic for certain brands.

Ikea, for one, specializes in cheap, modular, expensive-looking furniture that’s a turnkey solution for a newly single fellow who has to set up house in a hurry. Haagen Dazs, famously, offers solace to many a rejected female (read: chocolate).

These companies’ identification with pain is so integral as to be almost cliche – except you’d be hard-pressed to find an admission from corporate that they actively woo the downtrodden – and they probably don’t. It’s just that their products are so uniquely suited in their appeal to those who suffer. They are comfort products by design. And who needs comfort more than someone recently shunned?

The moral is: pain sells. You can turn that into a positive for your brand.

As you build your online credibility through your finely honed social media presence, you begin to be viewed as an authority. If a follower or friend has had a bad experience with your competitor, you reap the reward when they come crying on your shoulder. If you’re sincere, it’s not manipulation. It’s simply emotional capital. If you are a good person selling a good product, and your online media campaign is well intentioned, you’ll win business. Not only will you heal the hurt, you’ll help save others from it in the first place.

Someone asked me yesterday what I thought the best metric of influence in social media is. I don’t think there’s any better than a reputation as someone who can help save someone a lot of heartache.