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Robert Taylor, A.K.A "Robot Terror", accidentally became a Social Media professional from 2008 to 2011 while at Rackspace. He has since returned to his customer service roots and lives in Seattle, WA, which, appropriately enough, is home of the Cloud. Since Adland has been watching how brands engage in social media, with Kidsleepy listing the heroes and scoundrels of superstorm Sandy, and me discussing dark social in Adweek, we thought we'd talk to the people who have been the brands in social media.
"Social Media Czar" -- this didn't represent the role at all. For a few months my actual internal designation was "Untitled Exempt", which was perhaps my favorite :). Eventually, we settled calling the team the Social Media Customer Intervention team and I publicly retained the title of Senior Systems Engineer and Social Media Manager.
Dab: That's interesting. Is social media, such as twitter, a good place for a brand to use as a helpdesk? An annoucement-desk? As the white courtesy telephone?
Robert Taylor: We didn't look for a good place to join Social Media; rather, we went to where our customers were already. We realized that we had a huge investment in a world-class support organization and those few customers going to Twitter were expressing frustration with our service, so treating these edge cases as escalations made sense. We weren't attempting to set up a new customer service team but to intervene when either a perceived or real customer service failure occurred. Our customers drove us to Twitter.
Note that they didn't drive us to Facebook or one of the myriad of other social engagement venues. (Except for personal blogs; we also set up Google Alerts for our keywords to find blog posts mentioning us and would engage there if appropriate).
I'd say our use of Twitter for the Rackspace account was less of a White Phone and more of a Red Phone â "I have an urgent need, help!" As a matter of fact, with the Rackspace app for managing Cloud accounts the "Help" button had the support phone number and a link to @Rackspace on Twitter. I have mixed feelings about this today, but at the time it was the natural progression for us at Rackspace. Should everyone (anyone?) else follow this pattern? I have my doubts.
Dab: I have noticed that large brands that do well on twitter are expressing the brands core values on it. In Rackspaces case, what you describe as your twitter presence is "fanatical support" which is the very essence of the Rackspace brand. I find that social media is a tool that can express core values already inherit in a brand, rather than coupon-advertise & hard sell. src="adland.tv/eroes-and-scoundrels-superstorm-sandy/1351991747">the heroes and scoundrels of superstorm Sandy, and me discussing dark social in Adweek, we thought we'd talk to the people who have been the brands in social media.
One side effect of meeting customers on Twitter is that others saw us there and began to engage more on Twitter with us. Hardly ever in an inappropriate way, interestingly. Thus, as our outreach continued, our mentions (the majority of which we quite positive, by the way) increased as well. By the time I left the role in April of 2011 we had 11,000 to 15,000 mentions a month via the keyword searches. Very few of these were customers, however, as Rackspace was getting a lot of press and blog write-ups.
Dab: That's interesting. Is social media, such as twitter, a good place for a brand to use as a helpdesk? An annoucement-desk? As the white courtesy telephone?
Robert Taylor: We didn't look for a good place to join Social Media; rather, we went to where our customers were already. We realized that we had a huge investment in a world-class support organization and those few customers going to Twitter were expressing frustration with our service, so treating these edge cases as escalations made sense. We weren't attempting to set up a new customer service team but to intervene when either a perceived or real customer service failure occurred. Our customers drove us to Twitter.
Note that they didn't drive us to Facebook or one of the myriad of other social engagement venues. (Except for personal blogs; we also set up Google Alerts for our keywords to find blog posts mentioning us and would engage there if appropriate).
As a matter of fact, with the Rackspace app for managing Cloud accounts the "Help" button had the support phone number and a link to @Rackspace on Twitter. I have mixed feelings about this today, but at the time it was the natural progression for us at Rackspace. Should everyone (anyone?) else follow this pattern? I have my doubts.
Dab: I have noticed that large brands that do well on twitter are expressing the brands core values on it. In Rackspaces case, what you describe as your twitter presence is "fanatical support" which is the very essence of the Rackspace brand. I find that social media is a tool that can express core values already inherit in a brand, rather than coupon-advertise & hard sell.
