Comcast said it will significantly boost its social media customer care team, tripling the number of employees at the unit and adding more resources and support to help them to better serve customer needs.
The cable operator announced the plans on a blog posting by senior vice president of customer service Tom Karinshak. In the posting, Karinshak said that the growing use of social media like Facebook and Twitter spurred the decision to beef up the unit.
“When we first launched our social care team in 2007, the idea of engaging with customers on social media was brand new,” Karinshak said in the blog posting. “Today the world looks completely different.”
Comcast plans to increase the size of its social media customer care team from its current 20 employees to 60, which it says will enable the cable company to support customers across more platforms and get to them faster. Comcast hopes to reach that staffing goal by late spring or early summer and will continue to support social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, expanding to other platforms as the unit expands.
“A larger team also means that we'll be able to increase bicoastal and bilingual coverage to make sure we are available 24/7 to customers who speak either English or Spanish,” Karinshak said in the blog post.
Cable operators have long seen social media and online functions as a way to address customer care issues quickly. Most cable operators allow customers to ask questions and set up appointments online and via other methods.
According to Comcast, its social media care team has access to all the same tools as its call center agents – they have a direct line into tech teams so they can schedule appointments. The cable company also will add analysts to monitor activity on social media, who can for example identify when a lot of customers appear to be having the same issue and rectifying it on a broader scale. Comcast also has set a goal that its team will get to customers within 30 minutes of their reaching out to the company via social media. No small task when you consider Comcast has about 22 million customers across the country.
“We are going to continue to grow social care as much as it takes to make it a real, vibrant way for customers to get their questions answered and issues resolved,” Karinshak said in the blog post. We’re just beginning the hiring process now and it’s going to take some time to get up and running, but we are really excited about the possibilities.”
