BT Care on Twitter

BT has finally followed the inexorable shift towards realtime, responsive customer services and opened a BT Twitter account for customer services. BT Care asks vistors “Have a question? Follow us and let us help!” and it looks very much like that’s how it works.  Having only launched a few weeks ago, they already have 1800 followers and have made 7300 posts (although they evidently took Bank Holiday Monday off, since the last post was 19 hours ago).

Most of their posts are outreach interventions -”Hi, is there anything we can help you with?”, or responses to direct Tweets, like this one, “@BTCare I’ve done the usual checks and have reported the fault online. Am awaiting a call. Give them a nudge, ta”. There’s a constant stream of customers having their problems resolved more or less as they announce them. For anyone interested in social media monitoring and customer services, it makes quite compelling viewing.

I’m told they did a trial with a single Customer Services Twitterer, but they were soon subsumed under the weight of Tweets. They now have a team of ten Twitterers who actively monitor the Web for posts from frustrated BT customers. It looks like all hands on deck today.