From PRSA
http://www.prsa.org/supportfiles/news/viewNews.cfm?pNewsID=842347492
SOURCE: PR Tactics and The Strategist Online
Comcast reaching out to disgruntled bloggers
When people complain online about Comcast, they’re likely to receive an unsolicited message from the company, offering to help resolve their issues. Some call the practice an evolution of customer service, but others find it disturbing.
“The rest of his e-mail may as well have read, ‘Big Brother is watching you,’” The New York Times quotes a student at the University of Washington as saying about a message he received from a Comcast representative after the student griped about the company, the nation’s largest cable provider, on his blog. Frank Eliason, Comcast’s “digital care manager,” says he was just trying to help. From his desk in Philadelphia, Eliason uses online tools to monitor public comments on blogs, message boards and social networks for any mention of Comcast, the Times reports. And when he finds a complaint, he contacts the source and tries to defuse the problem.
As blogs, forums and social networking sites expose potentially thousands of people to the experiences of individual customers, companies have grappled with how to respond. Some — including Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods Market and the Internet shoe store Zappos — are trying to reach out to customers online, often through the social “mini-blogging” service Twitter. But Comcast, which ranked at the bottom of the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index, is taking an extra step by contacting customers who discuss the company online. While some people find the cable giant’s online outreach annoying, overall it appears to be good for the company’s image. Eliason reportedly told the Times that he believed the benefits far outweighed the occasional awkwardness, and that he remembered only seven cases in which customers had called him creepy. — Compiled by Greg Beaubien for Tactics and The Strategist Online.
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