Company: Time Warner Cable
Entry submitted by: Phil Blum (TWC-PhilB) Social Media Customer Care Manager
https://twitter.com/TWCableHelp
Lithy category: Best Social Support Program
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Time Warner Cable is one of the largest providers of video, high-speed data and phone, supporting over 15 million customers in the United States. In 2010, I was selected to lead the social media arm of TWC’s customer care operations. Our mission was to provide high-quality service experience to customers on any channel for which they prefer to interact and we needed a solid social engagement and response platform that can help us manage the flow of service-related conversations and ensure that my team of social agents are able to address each and every customer need.
We launched Lithium Social Web in April 2012 to my team of 10 social customer care agents and we now have a streamlined platform to identify messages from Twitter and Facebook that need a response and provide timely resolutions. Within 6 months, we have improved our social response rate by 30% and increased agent productivity by 57%. This is driven by the integrated nature of the platform that allows my team to tackle cases more quickly and ability to respond without switching back and forth between different social tools. We were also very honored to be placed on the "Top 10 Socially Devoted Brand" list by AdWeek.
Our social support program proved critical in sustaining customer relationships during one of the worst storms in recent history. As Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the East Coast in the fall of 2012, our customers were anxious to learn when their services would return. Many of them turned to their only remaining avenue of contact: accessing Facebook and Twitter via their smartphones. With the overwhelming increase in volume, my team was able to step up to the plate and even received kudos from grateful customers for their timely response.
Our social support strategy extends beyond this customer care team. We will be launching a community soon because this is a critical way for us to provide support in a scalable way. We also want to bring the conversations that are happening about us onto our own domain so we can engender goodwill, provide more transparency to our customers, and weigh in on those conversations where appropriate. We’re excited to embark onto the next phase of our social support strategy!