How corporate social media can encourage customers to help one another

Corporate Social Media Case Study: Comcast

Frank Eliason has become a bit of a social media and customer service legend. He’s the guy behind @comcastcares on Twitter and, one by one, helps frustrated customers. But, it begs the question: What happens when Frank is unavailable, when he needs a day off?

In a recent interview with BusinessWeek, Frank shares an incredible story of when he had to miss work. He announced to his followers he’d be unavailable for a while, and expected to come back to an extra day’s worth of issues. But instead, he saw something amazing: Comcast customers were helping one another.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Thanks to the friendly Twitter network Frank has built up, customers occasionally help one another, as he discovered a few weeks earlier when he mentioned in a Tweet that he had an important family event during the day and would be unavailable. Once the event ended that evening, he logged onto Twitter at home to see which customers in the Twitt-o-sphere needed help that day.

“I found that people who didn’t work for Comcast were responding, saying: ‘Let Frank have his day. Can I help?’” he recalls. “They were saying: ‘Here, try this.’ And it was the most amazing thing. That day I understood the effectiveness of what we do.”

Learn More: 1to1 Media’s Think Customers post, “Customers Helping Customers“