JULY 9, 2009

Equitable Customer Service In The Social Media Age

A few months ago, I moved to a new apartment, and with new apartments come all sorts of fun stuff like turning on utilities, paying security deposits, and scheduling a time (always between 10 - 2 or some other ridiculous window) for the cable guy to come.

So Comcast came, dutifully between 10 and 2, and attempted to install my cable. “Attempted” being the operative word - after about 45 minutes of fruitless effort, including significant help from me, my installer left, unable to finish the job. I went back to work, disappointed, then came home and did it myself with software I downloaded from the Comcast website.

You can imagine my surprise when I got my bill a few weeks later, complete with a hefty installation fee - for an installation that never happened, and that I ultimately did myself!

Unfazed, I got in touch with Comcast customer service via Twitter and complained about the fee, and it was refunded within 24 hours or so. “Great customer service!” I thought. “Why don’t more companies do this?”

But after thinking about it for a while, I wonder whether that these social media presences are really a solution to anything. I think we should really ask ourselves who’s being served by the Twitter accounts and Facebook pages set up by customer service departments. Yes - my concerns were addressed almost instantaneously, and without the usual rigmarole of 1-800 numbers typical of megacorporation customer service. But according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project,  broadband penetration varies wildly between different demographic groups in America. So, for instance, while 83% of Americans with bachelor’s degrees had a home broadband connection when surveyed this April, only 30% of senior citizens, 35% of low-income Americans, 46% of rural Americans and 46% of African Americans did. In addition, a stunning 85% of upper-income Americans had broadband access at home. These differences may have become more stark since broadband costs have increased: in a year where we’ve experienced slight price deflation, the price of broadband has risen 13%.

The correlation between the popularization of social media and broadband adaptation is not accidental.  Social media sites are often bandwidth-heavy and more or less require high-speed internet to be fully functional. Others, like Twitter, may not be bandwidth hogs but are much more useful if you maintain constant interaction with the service - something dial-up doesn’t do well.

I’m concerned that by embracing social media channels for customer service, companies might be inadvertently creating a two-tiered system for customers with problems - one, for wealthy and well-educated customers, that’s effective, friendly, and responsive, and the other for everyone else. From personal experience, the difference between @comcastcares and 1-800-COMCAST could not be more stark. One’s a pleasant, sometimes obsequious exercise in customer satisfaction; the other is bureaucratic, confusing, often unfriendly and occasionally flat-out wrong. I don’t know whether the people behind the @comcastcares account are higher up on the food chain than their phone customer service brethren, but they seem more empowered to refund money and deal with complaints. It bothers me that people like my grandparents, who live in the country, don’t have bachelor’s degrees, and are senior citizens, don’t have access to that same system.

I think efforts to provide better customer service are laudable, but they should at least attempt to be technologically-neutral. If I can get my problem resolved quicker on Twitter, make it so that your reps on the phone can do the same thing. Of course, efforts to make broadband more widespread and less expensive wouldn’t hurt, either.