Customer Service is One Blog Away
Brian Stelter wrote a piece in the New York Times last week titled "Complaining Bloggers Have a Cable Company's Ear" that described an innovative new form of customer service. Comcast, everyone's favorite company to hate, has a team of ten people who identify disgruntled customers online and proactively reach out to them to help resolve their problems.
It sounds like they have a series of automated key word searches running 24/7 that look for phrases like "comcast sucks," "comcast blows", and "comcast must die". A Google search reports 29,600 for the former, 2,170 for the middle term and 25,500 for the later. Google Alerts can email you the latest additions to your list daily.Comcast then identifies the author of the web page and asks if they can help resolve the problem. It sounds like they have a ton more power than the customer services representatives at 1-800-COMCAST. They can actually make a technician show up in 30 minutes.
You can pretty quickly follow this train of thinking to identify good commercial lead generation programs using this tool. The ambulance chasing lawyers can do searches of blogs for "accident" (155 million search results) and find fresh victims complaining about their injuries. Realtors can search for "thinking about moving" (372,000) to find new clients. Personal trainers can set up Google Alerts to let them know when someone writes "I am fat" (279,000). Endless possibilities.
Since reading the article I have been trying to think of nonprofit or social benefit uses for this model. I guess that instead of searching for "comcast sucks," a suicide prevention hotline could search for "I suck" (6,280,000) The United Way could hunt for donations by searching in January for resolutions posted in blogs that call for "giving back" (4,380,000) or "donating to charity" (77,300). They might even use the Comcast model and help revive their brand by proactively responding to critics who think the "United Way sucks" (214). They could also reward the seven fans who wrote that "United Way is great" (free tickets from their partner the NFL).
Joking aside, it strikes me that there is an opportunity to identify individuals in need of help through key word searches. It would need to be much more refined (the term "I suck" turns out to mostly bring up porn). For example, Exhale, a nonprofit support line for women who recently had abortions, could try to find women openly recovering from the experience (especially young women who would use a blog for such a topic).
There is also a public awareness opportunity for an issue like Lyme disease to find out who is writing about it and to make sure they are painting an accurate picture and connecting people who need help or have questions to resources. Or you could find all the blogs that are writing about climate change and post responses to make sure that readers know that 18% of climate change is due to the cattle industry (if that is your bone to pick).
And, it does create some opportunities to connect with supporters you may not know (the "Red Cross is great" shows 1,340 results) or win over your critics.
Aaron, really interesting post. I had seen that article. Of course, even for a cable company, Comcast seems to have an inordinate number of unhappy customers out there, so I can see how this program would be beneficial to them. I have also read and seen how major companies (including Comcast) are using Twitter to identify and address customer service issues.
You mentioned the downsides of companies using the Comcast model. Another potential issue is the growing assault on privacy that we are increasingly seeing online. The kind of search-driven program you are referring to could be viewed negatively by some people who view it as more intrusive corporate marketing and communications. Of course, if consumers are putting messages out on the web, then they should be prepared to get some kind of feedback. That is ultimately a big point of the Internet.
This is another example of the power of search, which has changed, and is further changing, marketing in a profound way.
I agree with Patrick that the approach of reaching out directly to people suits Comcast because of all their unhappy customers. For bigger companies who have a better relationship with customers, interacting with "followers" on a service like Twitter sounds much more rewarding and less costly. Unfortunately, I can't help but think that the online "squeaky wheel" who got some grease from Comcast just jumped ahead of someone who was patiently trying to work through the normal channels there.
For smaller non-profits, monitoring relevant topics and leaving comments where people are writing about and/or discussing them is a good way to build awareness and even traffic to their own web site. Posting a link to their own web site, particularly on a quality site (with a solid page rank) will improve their own site's rankings and ultimately drive more keyword search traffic (in addition to direct traffic from the link itself).