Twinterview – BT use of social media for service

This week I had the fairly novel experience of doing a ‘Twinterview’, i.e. an interview over Twitter, using the hashtags #BTCare and #e20eyao. Rachel Phillips (http://twitter.com/phillips_r) from Oracle’s Enterprise 2.0 team did the interview, which was all about BT’s use of social media for customer service. Here’s a transcript of the interview:

Hi Graeme, thanks for agreeing to do this interview ahead of the event on April 29th in London http://bit.ly/9i4ofi
Thanks for asking me
What is your role in BT ?
My job is working on new ways of using social media for customer service for our residential customers
What division of BT do you work for?
I’m in BT Retail, which is our UK B2B and B2C business, and I’m in the customer service operation
What is BTCare’s role in BT Retail ?
BTCare is the name we use for our online customer service for our residential customers
So what SM tools/solutions do BTCare use to engage their customers?
Twitter of course but also YouTube , our own forums at http://bit.ly/crUzob and some other forums
When did you start using SM tools and what made you start using them?
We’ve used forums on BT.com for a while but started ramping things up in a big way in early 2009
Why did you start ramping things up in early 2009 ?
Why? Well I want us to try to reach customers wherever they are, and hopefully help serve them on-channel
What specifically started you using Twitter/You Tube, seems like a big step to take for such a big brand?
Yeh indeed. We wanted to have a relevant presence in the media that our customers choose to use really
What if the comments are negative from customers, how do you respond?
Social media gives us a unique, public & visible opportunity to fix problems and try to turn perception around
Do you get positive comments too then ?
Absolutely! Have a look here http://bit.ly/aq43n6
Great comments, do you think your audience is just of one type of demographic – young digital native ?
I think it’s a real mixture, I’ve been amazed by the breadth of people using BTCare for service
Are you seeing the use of SM growing in your customer base ?
Definitely. An increasing number of people see soc media as their main use of the web, and we acknowledge that
Something I am really interested in: when it was agreed to use SM for BTCare, did you plan or just react ?
Without a doubt, plan. BTCare has to be appropriate for our brand AND the relevant media, so has to be right.
So do you employ someone to monitor traffic with Twitter and You Tube open all day, how to you consolidate ?
We have a team who monitor Twitter, the forums etc via a soc media monitoring tool to see where we can help
Are you seeing people’s attitude to BT change due to your use of SM ?
Yes, we think so. We’ve had some very positive press, customer comments and blogs impressed by what we’ve done
What are you planning next to increase customer engagement online ?
That would be telling! We’ve got lots of ideas about how we extend using social media – watch this space!
On April 29th what other key points will you highlight on Engaging Your Audience Online http://bit.ly/9i4ofi ?
Brands need to take SM seriously, its here to stay, as i said on my blog http://bit.ly/931TIV – embrace it!
Graeme – thanks for the interview and helping us understand how BT use SM to Engage with their customers.
My pleasure, thanks for inviting me

Certainly different!!