In the past few days, I’ve seen, or heard of, first efforts from a couple of major Australian ISPs engaging with their communities on Twitter. Unfortunately, it looks like the lawyers got way too involved in the process for the Big Pond Team.
The responses on the account are full of noncommital, anonymous, boilerplate text. It’s just the sort of thing that’s anathema to both good customer service and the kind of open, honest, human conversation that is critical in social networks, and even more critical if you’re trying to engage your community as a brand and business.
Obviously, the Telstra management aren’t influenced by The Cluetrain Manifesto.
I’m assured by someone who knows, that the folks behind @bigpondteam are very good and care a lot. I believe that’s the case. I also hope that the shackles they find themselves bound by are loosened sooner rather than later so that they can really engage with the customer base in a true conversation. In social spaces, artificiality just doesn’t cut it.
There are plenty of examples of great customer service on Twitter – @comcastcares, @johnmccrea, all the Zappos staff to name a few. This is how it should have been done. As it stands, the effort looks false, forced and artificial, which is a real shame.
I wish Telstra had sought the advice of me or one of the other smart people in the Australian social networking community before doing this.
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Excellent and timely post.
And damn those lawyers. I know the Bigpond team are good people, evidenced by the helpful and genuinely concerned email I got on the back of the Twitter (stilted) ‘conversation’.
I really hope they can sort this out to everyone’s benefit.
Howdy Stephen,
You’re right; I suspect that they are shackled – but that should not excuse ignorance and that is exactly what happened here.
Of course there is someone in charge of the social media growth at Telstra/BigPond – and that person should put much effort into learning about a particular product before letting the company jump in and damage the brand – isn’t that his/her job?
Even if, let’s say, the CEO has said “I want us to be involved in SM” – the marketing group should have said – “sure, but if you want to do it right, these are the things we need to address before we begin.”
Additionally, you don’t go and sign up for the latest greatest thing just to be able to say ‘we’re involved’ – you find the products/services that best suit you.
Sorry – I’m not having a rant at you; I know you respect the social Web – it just bugs me that they are getting all this publicity for doing a really crappy job.
But then again; even bad publicity is better than no publicity…
/rant
But, they didn’t. They jump in first and then have the nerve to say ‘well it’s easy to attack newcomers’ – it has nothing do do with that