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Social Media Learnings from the NAACM Customers 1st Conference

This week I attended the North American Conference on Customer Management in Phoenix, Arizona and am taking away a long list of best practices.

My favorite session came from Frank Eliason, Director of Digital Care, National Customer Operations at Comcast.  The session blog can be found here: Turn Your Enemies into Raging Fans - The Critical Imperatives of Listening Online. Frank has been called 'Comcast's Twitter Man' by Business Week.  He has reinvented Comcast's culture over the past couple years by pro-actively reaching out to customers, including those who have had problems.

What I really liked about his message was the following concept: you don't change an organization based on numbers.  Improvements are based on the customer story.

Frank and his team spends their time following up with bloggers, including turning around the site 'Comcast Must Die' into a positive story of listening to customers and seeing what they can do to help.  He used feedback to drive changes throughout the organization, often impacting productivity.

Another thing that I appreciated about Frank's message: faking passion will come through and you'll be crushed.  People who respond to customers much be passionate.  Frank and his team take the approach of following up with naysayers via a two way communication method. Instead of simply posting an answer on a blog, they will try to reach the customer via phone or email before they simply post to the blog: 'How can I help?' Can you think of a better way of earning back a customer's trust?