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O2 engages with customers through Twitter

November 4th, 2008 by Wendy McAuliffe

Hats off to O2 - after years of getting its telephone customer service completely wrong, it’s finally doing a great job of engaging with disgruntled online customers.

Yesterday, in a moment of exasperation, I Tweeted the following about my mobile provider (after being on hold to O2 for 40 minutes):

“wendymcauliffe: O2 truly has the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered. Every time I need to contact them my blood pressure rockets!”

A couple of minutes later, I received the following reply:

“hellojp: @wendymcauliffe Hi there, I work for O2 and saw your tweet - anything I can help with?”

After briefing describing my predicament, I promptly received another reply:

“hellojp: @wendymcauliffe Oh no, not ideal! Definitely not what we’d be aiming for - sorry you had such a hard time! Did you get your problem fixed?”

The O2 representative then went on to give me his personal email address, so that I could email him with the details of my enquiry which he has promised to handle today.

I’m not sure who’s behind O2’s adoption of Twitter, but this is definitely a step in the right direction, and something that all public service companies should be doing. While there are still big improvements to be made with O2’s telephone customer service, it’s great to see them engaging with customers online in such a timely fashion.

It will be interesting to see how my case is dealt with today!

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4 Responses to “O2 engages with customers through Twitter”

  1. Will McInnes Says:

    Marvellous! Only O2 can claim to be really behind their adoption of Twitter, but I was the one given the opportunity to train these guys and on one of the days JP made some excellent contributions and showed plenty of evidence that he was a net native and really got the online world, so much so that he’s now moved into the new dedicated Digital Communications role. It’s been brilliant to see him doing such a helpful job for people. Go JP! (Hope your prob is actually solved Wendy!).

    Will McInness last blog post..Flash on the Beach 2008 Round-up (Part one)

  2. Wendy McAuliffe Says:

    Great job Will! The benefits of Twitter cannot be underestimated by businesses. We’re also training a number of brands in how to use the tool effectively as part of their customer engagement strategy, and in many cases the results can be seen almost instantly. Most brands are shocked to see what is being said about them online, and amazed by how quickly they can make steps to rectify the situation.

    (P.S. My problem is in part solved - am waiting for further assistance today!)

  3. JP Says:

    Who’da thunk it, all that time spent on the web was actually research…

    PS seen lots of emails flying about Wendy, we’ll fix you yet!

  4. Analysis: UK mobile carriers on Twitter (part 2 – quants) « Wholly Social Says:

    [...] was the first to embrace Twitter (with some agency help), and is also the most [...]

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