Virgin media and using social media

Virgin Media and Social MediaHow we’re using it for customer service and what we’ve learnt

Alex Brown - September 21, 2010

Who we are

What we’re doing in Social Media

• Forums

• Promoter Community

• Facebook

• Twitter

The Virgin Media Twitter Tweam: Pete (PM), Billy (BMc) and Sam (ST)

Help & Support Forums

Promoter Community – ‘The Sofa’

Facebook

Twitter - @virginmedia

Engagement

• Launched @virginmedia twitter feed in Dec ‘08

• One of the first UK ISPs to engage with customers via

Twitter – customers were already talking about us

• Followers increasing steadily with no signs of slowdown

• Growing organically and through pro-active engagement

• Dedicated customer care resource support customers

@virginmedia engagement

• Follower growth currently linear

@virginmedia engagement

• Over 25,000 posts since launch, with exponential growth

Dedicated resource launched

2,310 tweets – 92 per day

Other Virgin Media feeds

• V Festival (@vfestival)

• On Demand (@vmondemand) and Movies (@vmmovies)

• Shorts (@VMediaShorts) & Pioneers (@vmpioneers)

• Virgin Media Business (@vmbusiness)

• Retired Feeds

• Portal news & editorial engagement

• Special offers

@virginmedia Wordcloud

Source: www.wordle.net

Customer Care via Twitter

Reactive

• Customer ‘tweets’ to @virginmedia asking for help, venting frustration etc

• One of the Twitter ‘Tweam’ picks it up and offers help on the spot if they can. If not,

they invite the customer to send details on to our dedicated team mailbox

• Owns issue to a resolution and ‘Wows’ the customer (case management)

• Feeds back within the business to ensure we learn from

Proactive

• ‘Tweam’ uses keyword searches on Twitter to locate customers talking about us,

reaching out to offer assistance as needed.

The results

Happy customers advocating Virgin Media

• Net Promoter Score® (NPS)

• Cost to serve

• In customers’ own words

I picked 10 because there isn't an 11. Sam in the

Twitter team was really really helpful and a pleasure to

deal with!

In customers’ own words …

Fostering Advocacy

Making it all worthwhile…

Virgin Media - “Top Twittering ISP” (July 2009)http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/news/2009/07/twitter_tweet_for_better_broadband/

Stephen Fry - Influencer

Just a handful of tweets – each time Stephen Fry mentioned 50Mb he reached over 500,000 followers (now has 1.7m+).

One high profile installation has the power to create immense word of mouth

Rob Brydon – Halo effect

Each time Rob Brydon mentioned Virgin/50Mb he reached over 50,000 followers (now has ~200K).

Another high profile installation generating significant word of mouth, and significant influence

What we’ve learnt

• The conversation is happening about you, whether you join in or not

• If your products don’t work, social media customer service won’t fix them

• Don’t be daunted – get stuck in and do it now

• The power of case management

• Trust your staff’s judgment

• Importance of internal feedback contacts

• Instantaneous feedback channel

What’s next

• Where do we take social media customer service from here?

• Promotion of social media channels

• Promotional use of social media

• New opportunities (e.g. TiVo integration)

Alex Brown

Senior Manager, Customer Experience

Virgin Media

alex.brown@virginmedia.co.uk

@alexbrown1972 on Twitter

Dilbert!

Source: www.dilbert.com