Why Social Media is Succeeding at Qwest

Jason Cormier — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:01:01 -0400

Qwest announced its "Talk to Qwest" program today - a comprehensive social media effort effectively helping Qwest customers resolve a range of issues online - including billing, tech support, product/pricing inquiries, etc.

Starting on Twitter, @TalkToQwest, Qwest has put together a super-group of people clearly demonstrating their care for customers through daily outreach and response (in 140 characters or less). That is actually the short answer to why they are succeeding in social media: their people.

As the social media agency hired to assist them, it's a privilege to share a little personal insight on Qwest with respect to both challenges and opportunities. But first, I have a confession.

Frankly, I was a little concerned about the project before we even started working together. It's one thing to focus on a project within a department of a large company - but when multiple departments are motivated to participate, and impassioned individuals are talking about literally changing how the company does business… well, I'll let you fill in the blanks from your own experience. Exciting? Yes. Quickly and effectively executed? Often not.

My internal questions were simple. How quickly is Qwest really going to be able to move on this? Would even necessary things like "messaging" and legal stand in our way of doing it right? Could they be relevant? Could they be cool? Could they be timely? Would the people we worked with have enough buy-in from the rest of the organization to really show the world that Qwest "gets it?"

Today, you (and Qwest's customers) are in the position to answer some of the more important questions I had early on. Socialmedia.qwest.com is a good start for seeing how the company is introducing and addressing the relevance factor.

And cool?! How about those Viddler videos of the people behind Qwest's Twitter presence? I can't tell you how glad I am about the avoidance of over-production that could have so easily been present here. And you just gotta see what this Qwest guy does at the bowling alley after hours (see video below). Classic!

In answer to my own questions - it's refreshing to say that early on, what we discovered within Qwest were groups of extremely committed people excited to work across multiple departments to make this happen. The natural process of helping to educate stake holders on the what's and why's of social media was soon escalated in a way that gave us and them an effective platform to educate others while also communicating objectives across a wide range of departments and decision makers. We could not have asked for a better start.

From the collaboration needed to focus on the right research, to the flexibility of learning new tools and concepts - we saw the most rapid of time lines that were consistently met.

While I'm expounding upon the kudos, I think it is important to mention Qwest would readily admit they are not the first in the industry to embrace social media as a means of customer service.

Still, I believe the inventiveness and authenticity in their approach will continue to set them apart over time - and because I have some insight to the numbers, it's a little easier for me to speak about this confidently :-)

In terms of the challenges, they are similar to what we are seeing everywhere in social media. The sheer volume of data and online conversations must be effectively filtered and managed. Optimizing social media monitoring tools to conform to an organization's needs and workflow is an ongoing effort.

For example, imagine coming across a blog, forum or Twitter post about your company's products or services. It's one of several hundred you see each week.

What are the guidelines for determining:

If the source is representative of someone you might respond to?
Within each classification of source, what is the predominant theme pertaining to the content?
How will you track resolution?
Assign resources?
Implement Feedback?
Demonstrate improvement and ROI as a result of the effort?
Extend learning to other departments within your company?

As we pursue the ever-changing challenges and opportunities residing around these kinds of questions, it will be exciting to watch Qwest move forward in this space.

For us, each customer engagement opens a new realm of learning, sometime accompanied by unexpected surprises. Qwest has not fallen short in this - and one of the pleasant surprises for me personally relates to how well they have been able to do what has made our own organization successful over the last five years: "Get it done."

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Why Social Media is Succeeding at Qwest