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Print

Customers get chirping about Twitter

3 October 2008

Posted by: nowwearetalking editor

Topic: Telstra , Consumer & Technology

Tags:    bigpond  blogosphere  consumer-and-technology  customer-service  news  social-networking  telstra  twitter

Yellow canary - Tweety bird - Twitter website

As a media comms company Telstra is both an innovator and early-adopter of new technology. Online social networking is becoming increasingly popular with a steady stream of new players and a constant evolution of functionality and Telstra has found a way to tap into the trend. Making use of the latest micro-blogging site Twitter (twitter.com), Telstra has introduced a tech-savvy way of interacting with our customers.

Twitter is an online social network that allows users to post online updates - known as tweets - of no more than 140 characters for other Twitter users to read and comment on. The content of tweets range from describing the users’ mood to venting frustrations on a variety of issues.

The Scrum

Telstra blogger Mike Hickinbotham which shares his insights on how BigPond became the first Australian telco using Twitter to provide technical support to customers

BigPond is tapping into the Twitter-sphere to gauge customer feedback and respond to comments or direct enquiries from customers. Director BigPond Customer Operations, Brady Jacobsen and his team as using a range of Web 2.0 applications and social networking sites - YouTube, Facebook and Second Life - to interact with customers.

"In our first week, the response has been significant, we immediately had someone contacting us, providing us with good and bad feedback and interestingly offering to contribute to the success of this new channel," Brady said.

"It's a real shift in the way we interact with our customers, we are truly innovating with our customer in a way I have never seen before."

Customers can even send tweets via the BigPond ‘contact us’ page and receive a reply from the Twitter team.

Learn more:

  • Visit the BigPond Twitter (twitter.com) webpage for more information and to contact the BigPond Twitter team. 

Comments

Alister Cameron
3 comments
6 October 2008
11:30am

Comment Permalink

Ok... another lesson in Social Media... we might be here a while, Telstra :)

Do NOT label the author of a post "nowwearetalking editor".

Your readers want to know there is a human being writing here.

Everything in social media has to be in a human voice, revealing who that human is, and making access to that person -- within reason -- easy.

So.. who is "nowwearetalking editor" really?

-Alister

Jordan Kerr
1 comment
7 October 2008
9:05am

Comment Permalink

Hello editor and Alister;

While Alister's comment probably isn't about drumming up business, Telstra really need an Online Marketing consultant. If you look across any other blog or social marketing network other than "nowwearetalking", the sentiment is abundantly clear that Telstra is losing the social marketing PR battle.

Customers aren't chirping about Telstra on Twitter, they're using it as another place to complain about the myriad of problems that can happen with dealing with the company.

Alister is 100% correct in saying you need an identity, you need some humanity behind anything social. Who would go to a social party and make friends with a guy with a sack over his head? How on earth do you relate to that?

I'm sure there would be people at Telstra who are fighting this battle internally, it's the big boys up the top who are used to old media and are failing to embrace the ways of new media.

You can't win on the internet Telstra unless you do a complete 180 on your current strategy.

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