Comcast Cares? Comcast takes support to the social web
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
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[/figure]We were talking the other day about this crazy phenomenon - the one where the faceless, heartless behemoth of a megacorporation suddenly does a 180 and shows you that there are actual people (you know - human beings) working behind the scenes. Remember them?
A "rogue" Comcast employee named Frank Eliason went and started a Twitter account called "Comcast Cares". People who were tired of getting the runaround from the phone support, who were tired of holding for an hour, or who weren't getting the help they needed tried Tweeting ComcastCares as a last ditch, desperate effort to get some help.
Amazingly, it worked. Suddenly modems were getting rebooted, technicians were showing up, and internets were getting faster and more reliable.
Comcast got wind of this, and contrary to all common sense, went and gave Mr. Eliason some more people to help him out.
We'd like to believe in the romance and idealism of this, that maybe "Frank" is able to go around the system, and get things done without the red tape. We'd like to envision him as a Robin Hood figure, a lone hero working the system from the inside. We'd like to see him saying "IM IN UR BIG CORPORATE OFFICE, FIXIN UR STUFF".
Perhaps we're a bit glassy eyed and starstruck. This is probably all highly engineered, has been discussed in meetings, and has three middle managers running the show. Perhaps Frank Eliason isn't real. Perhaps it's all a sham.
But we can dream, can't we? We can dream.
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[/figure]We were talking the other day about this crazy phenomenon - the one where the faceless, heartless behemoth of a megacorporation suddenly does a 180 and shows you that there are actual people (you know - human beings) working behind the scenes. Remember them?A "rogue" Comcast employee named Frank Eliason went and started a Twitter account called "Comcast Cares". People who were tired of getting the runaround from the phone support, who were tired of holding for an hour, or who weren't getting the help they needed tried Tweeting ComcastCares as a last ditch, desperate effort to get some help.
Amazingly, it worked. Suddenly modems were getting rebooted, technicians were showing up, and internets were getting faster and more reliable.
Comcast got wind of this, and contrary to all common sense, went and gave Mr. Eliason some more people to help him out.
We'd like to believe in the romance and idealism of this, that maybe "Frank" is able to go around the system, and get things done without the red tape. We'd like to envision him as a Robin Hood figure, a lone hero working the system from the inside. We'd like to see him saying "IM IN UR BIG CORPORATE OFFICE, FIXIN UR STUFF".
Perhaps we're a bit glassy eyed and starstruck. This is probably all highly engineered, has been discussed in meetings, and has three middle managers running the show. Perhaps Frank Eliason isn't real. Perhaps it's all a sham.
But we can dream, can't we? We can dream.
******** type="text/javascript">
digg_url = 'http://icrontic.com/news/comcast_cares_comcast_takes_support_to_the_social_';
</script>
******** src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
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