AT&T "Rethinks" Customer Care

AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone in the U.S. has proven to be something of a mixed blessing. It has delivered new customers and lined its corporate coffers, but it has simultaneously strained the very fiber of the AT&T network.

Faced with new but unhappy customers and a flailing brand image, AT&T is turning to social media for a quick fix. In keeping with its "Rethink Possible" campaign, it's taking its customer care service to the social Web. Corporate spokesperson Susan Bean tells Ad Age: "We started using social media as a PR tool. With marketing, we discovered that for social media to be successful we really needed there to be customer care. Otherwise all anyone would want to talk about is: 'solve my problem.'"

Therein lies the rub. Social media has made your average user sophisticated enough to know the difference between "customer care" and PR. Corporations that try to confuse the two could confuse customers, and potentially suffer even more in the long run.

AT&T is being bombarded by Apple fans and iPhone customers, who are passionate about their wireless devices but rage against the service for its lapses, lags, and dropped calls. According to Ad Age, “Almost every day during the first half of last year, #attfail and "AT&T sucks" were regular trending topics on Twitter. Just last week, the twit again hit the fan as customers kvetched that they couldn't process new iPhone preorders on the carrier's website.”

AT&T’s social-media customer care corps is headed by social media strategist, Shawn McPike, and has swelled its ranks from five people dedicated to customer care on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to nineteen. "It's hard to sit there and let someone blast you, but that's the only way we're going to improve," said McPike.

"As much as it's not pleasant, I have to fully acknowledge and encourage people who come to me and listen. What we worry about is that there are customers out there who have problems. We need to at least get them engaged to show that we're listening and that may turn the tide over time."

Still, despite the success (at least in the media) of such social-based customer care initiatives as Comcast's Twitter team, as eConsultancy notes, Twitter and Facebook aren't always ideal channels for customer service delivery – especially when a customer needs immediate technical help.

Customer service isn't a silo; it requires excellence across multiple channels and still excludes non-social media consumers. That would mean that AT&T really isn't using social media for customer care, as true customer care would address the core problem of the network’s inefficiency.

At best, it could take and funnel issues to the appropriate customer service channels. It may be transparent and open, to be sure; but is it really the best use of social media for a brand? Instead of engaging customers, might it disengage those who perceive a company to be problem-plagued?

Also, from a company's perspective, customer care on social media isn't plugged into their customer service back-end, so red flags (outages, technical issues and the like) are being noted on a discrete platform.

At the end of the day, AT&T has to fix its infrastructure – and evidently its plans include an $18-$19 billion investment to address that. But until then, using social media to control inadequate service “is providing damage control with a smile.”