Defending Products at the Expense of the Brand

May 30th, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Response, Social Media, Uncategorized

Been thinking a lot lately about the Pampers DryMax fiasco. With so much to talk about, study and learn, I think I’d better postpone the final analysis for a future post. Today, I want to address one aspect of it that stands out like a sore thumb to me. Pampers is defending a product at the [...]

SXSW Interview Wrap-Up

April 23rd, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media, Uncategorized

One month and three interviews later, what did we learn from Frank Eliason, Susan Bean and Bowen Payson? Well first off, they’re clearly pioneers. When so many companies are just now trying to figure out how to handle Social CRM, these folks have a huge lead. In five years time, nerds like me who care [...]

SXSW Interview With Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica, Part 3

April 16th, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media

In Part 3 of my interview with @VirginAmerica’s Bowen Payson, we first tackle the “Will it scale?” question, and then cover team size and training, response speed and the future of Social CRM. Watch Part 1 and Part 2 for the whole conversation. A big thanks to Bowen for an insightful look inside Virgin America’s [...]

SXSW Interview With Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica, Part 2

April 14th, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media

In Part 2 of my interview with @VirginAmerica‘s Bowen Payson, we talk about intuition, monitoring tools and real-time Social CRM in action; how a tweet can get a pilot’s attention in the air. Plus, some customer training for Guy Kawasaki…

SXSW Interview With Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica

April 12th, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media

Bowen Payson is Virgin America’s Manager of Online and Digital Marketing and leads the social media response team on Twitter, Facebook and beyond. I caught up with him between panels in Austin last month to discuss how Virgin America tackles the nuts and bolts of social CRM in the high-profile and potentially volatile airline industry. [...]

Interview: @ATTCustomerCare’s Susan Bean

Shocking, I know, but not everyone on Twitter goes to SXSW. And even the ones who are in Austin already like @WholeFoods, might have PR departments who won’t allow interviews (for serious? yes, it’s true). AT&T was in Austin this year in a big way. After last year, they made sure they could handle the [...]

Interview With Frank Eliason AKA @ComcastCares, Part 4

March 31st, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media

We wrap up our 4-part interview by turning the focus to the internal process of hiring and training the right Digital Care team. The number-one attribute Frank looks for? Passion.

Interview With Frank Eliason AKA @ComcastCares, Part 3

March 30th, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media

In Part 3, we learn that the Digital Care team at Comcast sends Tastykakes and popcorn to customers in certain, special cases, and we get Frank’s take on the burning question: How does customer care via social media response scale in a large organization?

Interview With Frank Eliason AKA @ComcastCares, Part 2

March 29th, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media

Here’s Part 2 of my conversation with @ComcastCares Director of Digital Care, Frank Eliason. I’m posting these as soon as they’re edited, and will wrap them up in a single post later. In Part 2, Frank shares meaty details about the Comcast’s Digital Care response operations. We discuss reply/engagement ratios, the difference approaches to response [...]

SXSW Interview With Frank Eliason AKA @ComcastCares

March 25th, 2010 by admin under Customer Service, Response, Social Media, Uncategorized

This is the first in a series of interviews I did during my trip down to Austin for the South By Southwest Interactive Conference. In the days to come, I’ll also be posting interviews with Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica, and Susan Bean from the @ATTCustomerCare team at AT&T. If you read this blog, Frank Eliason [...]