Response to: “AT&T operators should answer more social media calls”

This is a response to this article that I found through a retweet by @tfamous from @D_Hong:

I certainly won’t argue the “image value” of recent appearances of social media in customer service, but articles like the one from The Huffington Post’s Catherine Ventura fail to recognize the costs associated with introducing a full-blown new channel for customer service. From the article:

“Is anyone from AT&T on Twitter?” I tweeted several weeks ago, “I have a horror story.”

The silence was deafening, despite the fact that there are at least six Twitter accounts that feature AT&T’s blue-striped sphere as their avatar. Granted, with a foreboding Tweet like that, I might not have wanted to respond either, but I’m a customer, so AT&T should have been paying attention.

I have to admit I was perplexed that that the AT&T sphere is not participating more actively in the Twittersphere. – Catherine Ventura, The Huffington Post

At a company like AT&T, where there are millions of customers that need support and customer service each month, the implementation of a new customer support channel is a major strategic decision which could cost millions of dollars to implement. Any corporation undertaking this sort of effort will want to do so  in a way that is supportable, sustainable and consistent. But more importantly, as I mentioned in my previous post on the subject of Twitter, there is an emerging shift from reactive customer service to proactive customer relationship building through social media that is practically demanded by Ms. Ventura under the terms of her customer relationship with AT&T.

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