customer support on twitter (anecdotes)

Further to IBF's and others' musings on using Twitter for an aftersales/customer service channel, here are some anecdotal comments taken from the BNM (Brighton New Media) mailing list. The demographic of the list is naturally early-adopter-oriented, but these anecdotes demonstrate the comparative (or at least percieved) effectiveness of twitter vs. telephone support:

For those with BT Broadband woes, myself (and others on this list I've
noticed) have recently been helped by the social media pixies on twitter,
@btcare.
A quick moan about BT services on there and they'll message you back and
seem to get the problem sorted quicker than through the usual channels.

I found the same with Quark - when I had moaned all morning on twitter about installation and wrong codes blah blah I had a message from a bod in California who had it sorted in an hour! Tech eventually got back to me 3 days later by conventional methods...

I get IntelliJ, Grails, and Tapestry support via twitter. All you have
to do is mention an issue you're facing and somebody (often the authors)
will jump at the chance to help.

Really useful!

Thanks BNMers (again).

Cutting out the middle-man(agement)

Following on from the IBF member meeting and the New Directions in Usability report (not just yet, out in March), here are some more examples from this month's Wired (UK) mag about how work is changing.

HubSpot - ditch staff holidays
Treating employees like contractors, leaving them to manage their own workflows and productivity with monitoring processess in place. Allowing out-of-office, flexible hours work patterns.

BestBuy - Global Brand, local responsiveness
Uses twitter sales support and customer feedback to provide local service tweaks (including and all-night NY store and a 'Coffee&Donught' session in Tampa). Local teams respond locally to demand.

LiveOps - enable networks of freelancers
Telephone support operators employed as home-based freelancers make up the staff for this "call centre in the sky".

Mosaic - "not an employer, but the hub of an entrepreneuerial community"
Investment banking consultancy that 'cloud sources' its staff - creating an enabling framework (including skype meetings, yammer channels). Consultants run concurrent careers and projects, Mosaic keeps overheads low.

Cancer Research UK - transparent, relevant, responsive
Scientists directly communicate with and monitor contributions from donors - keeping them motivated and focused on the goal, and keeping donors (customers) in touch with developments and progress.

All nice examples, and a flavour of the way in which the world of work, business and employment are heading.

Wired Magazine UK - Work Smarter
Intranet Benchmarking Forum Member Meeting roundup (eek! with a vid of me!)
forthcoming report New Directions in Usability