ComcastCares Social Media Interview with Frank Eliason
Monday, December 15th, 2008Social Media Smarts: Interview with Frank Eliason of Comcast aka @ComcastCares
Photo by Shel Israel
Twitter has become many things to many people and organizations for that matter, including Comcast. It really says something when a company experiences the bite of consumer malcontent via social media and then turns around and becomes known as a best practitioner. This is the experience of Comcast and Director of Digital Care, Frank Eliason.
Based in Philadelphia, PA, Frank started with Comcast as a Customer Service Manager in September, 2007 and as you’ll read in the interview below has evolved into the social media face of Comcast through his Twitter name ComcastCares.
Even though we typically focus on marketing and public relations subject matter on Online Marketing Blog, there is no doubt of the effect of good customer service facilitated by technology like social media. In this interview, Frank describes his involvement with social media as a customer engagement tool for Comcast, offers insights into justifying and measuring social media efforts as well his take on Twitter. Enjoy!
Can you describe how got involved in your current position with Comcast?
I am still trying to figure out how we got to the point, it has been an interesting year. I started with Comcast is September, 2007 managing a small Customer Service team. Within my first week we reached out to a few Customers via phone after they posted to a blog. We continued doing this until December. In December we started posting to the websites to help out. By February I was asked to take on a new role. My title evolved to Director of Digital Care.
What part does social media play in your overall responsibilities and how do you define social media to others?
My role, and the role of my team is to assist Customers throughout the internet, so I would say social media plays a very large role. I define social media as any place on the web where someone is talking. This means blogs Facebook, Twitter or other microblogs, but it also means YouTube, forums, or even personal websites.
There’s a lot to be said for how companies like Comcast have put their “listening hats” on with social media, especially after certain videos get popular on YouTube. For companies just looking into social media as a listenting/communications channel, what arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into social media engagement?
I think listening is imperative for all companies. I am sure many of the readers Google their name once in a while. Shouldn’t companies do the same? Listening is relatively easy and inexpensive. Just simply do a Google search. Or to be more timely, try a Google blogsearch. Many large companies have been doing this for years. After listening comes engagement, and this is where there is a little bit larger cost. I am asked about this and it really to me comes down to what is the cost for not being there. People will be talking about your brand, isn’t it great to be able to respond right back. The key to doing this is not being ‘PR’ or marketing but rather a real person that someone can relate to. That is why I believe Customer Service is the best fit.
As far as deciding what social media channels to engage in, what’s your decision making process when it comes to testing and implementing specific tactics?
Two key factors: Searchability and Timeliness. We can not continually look at the same website to see if anything is being said, so we use a variety of search techniques. This brings me to the second key factor. Searching but not getting the results for days or weeks after something is posted is not going to be effective. So we use methods that are immediate. One of the reasons we like Twitter is the real time search at search.twitter. Google blog search also allows you to sort blogs by 1 hour, 12 hours, 1 day, 1 week or 1 month.
How do you measure the success of your social media efforts? What goals and metrics make the most impact upstream (C-level) in your organization?
I think success is 2 fold. I think you can measure the feedback that you obtain and the benefits this provides an organization. You can also measure the positive feedback that is on the web.
Do you outsource any social media work and if so, do you have tips for other large company social media marketers for finding and managing consultants?
Like many organizations we do work with Nielsen Online (formerly Buzzmetrics) to collect feedback from the web.
Can you share your experience with a specific social media tool like Twitter or blogging? What were your goals, strategy and tactics? Can you share success metrics?
The biggest benefit to Twitter is if someone is answering the question here is what I am doing now,” you are getting immediate data on how someone is using your product or interacting with your organization. The goals are simple for everything we do. Offer assistance and gather feedback. The strategy we take is to be ourselves and offer to help. Not much different than what should happen in a Customer Service call.
Please share 3-4 resources you use for staying on top of social media marketing trends and tactics:
I actually am not a marketer, I do pay attention to groups like WOMMA, but I would not say I am an expert in this area. Tactics we learn as we go. Some of the best resources are the people we help and some of the organizations in this space. People are always open to talk.
Thank you Frank!
You can find Frank online at:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Time to be Frank Blog
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Report: Comcast usage monitor coming in January
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
DSL Reports has gotten word that Comcast will soon be offering its Internet subscribers a bandwidth usage meter as early as the first week of January. With the new system users would presumably be able to see how much bandwidth they’ve used, akin to cellular service providers offering estimates to keep customers from going over their allotted limit. Such a tool for Internet bandwidth would let customers adjust their usage habits accordingly.
Back in October the communications company imposed a limit on user downloads to 250 GB a month without providing any monitoring tools of its own short of installing special software. Additionally, customers are only given one verbal warning before a one-year service suspension if they go over that limit.
Oddly enough when the cap was first announced, we had gotten a confirmation that Comcast would indeed be offering a bandwidth tracking tool of its own. This was later recanted by a Comcast spokesperson who said “there are numerous free or fee-based meters that are widely available on the Internet to anyone who wants one.” Comcast’s excessive use FAQ still urges people to use McAfee’s security suite, but now notes that “we are in the process of creating a usage meter that will measure consumption for the Comcast account which will be available in the coming months.”
Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas tells us the meter must first undergo an employee trial: “When that testing is complete, we plan to launch the meter to all of our high-speed Internet customers. It will be available for free via a customer’s Comcast.net account and it will enable them to very easily keep track of their aggregate data usage each month.”
Also, if you’re looking to track your usage, worth checking out is my CNET colleague Seth Rosenblatt’s look at half a dozen different bandwidth monitoring tools.
Related: Comcast’s 50 Mbps service comes to OR, WA next month
Original post:
Report: Comcast usage monitor coming in January
Comcast’s 50 Mbps service comes to OR, WA next month
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Starting next month, subscribers of Comcast’s cable Internet service in Oregon and southwestern Washington state will be getting their connections switched over to “wideband.” The upgraded service, which was announced late last month doubles the speed of residential and business connections as well as offering two faster, more expensive plans that bring the maximum download speed to 22 and 50 Mbps respectively.
Wideband is currently available in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and parts of New England, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. According my press contact, Comcast plans to get it in “close to 10 million homes and businesses in the next couple of months,” which is a good percentage given the company’s overall customer base of 14.7 million subscribers.
The technology behind wideband, which is formally known as DOCSIS 3.0 brings with it the capability to hit speeds in excess of 300 Mbps, is six times faster than what Comcast is currently offering (or even capable of handling with its current network infrastructure). As mentioned before, this increase in download speed has not made a difference in Comcast’s bandwidth use restriction, which requires users to stay within 250 GB of downloads per month or face a one-year suspension upon the second offense.
Read the rest here:
Comcast’s 50 Mbps service comes to OR, WA next month
More tidbits on the new Comcast cap (updated)
Friday, August 29th, 2008Thursday’s news about the upcoming 250 GB monthly cap for Comcast data subscribers left some questions unanswered. I shot a few of my own, as well as some from readers over to Comcast to get them answered. These are mostly items that did not appear in both the post about the amendment, or the otherwise comprehensive FAQ page.
Update at 5:05 p.m. PDT: In a bizarre twist, the previous answers to my questions were answered by someone named Bill G., who Comcast says is not an authorized spokesperson for the company, despite answering my e-mail sent through the company’s press contacts page. Charlie Douglas, who is Director of Corporate Communications for Comcast’s Online & Voice Services, wrote me back to let me know the “correct” answers to these questions. I’ve highlighted where the previous unofficial answers differed for the sake of continuity, although the only major differentiation from the unofficial contact is the mention of Comcast developing its own bandwidth monitoring and notification service for its customers, which is apparently not happening.
Q: Will people who go over for the second time be able to challenge the account suspension, or is the two strikes and you’re out policy the standard?
Charlie Douglas: If a customer receives a call that he/she has exceeded 250 GB in a month, then we ask them to please moderate their usage. The vast majority of customers do so voluntarily. During that first call, however, we also explain that, per our Acceptable Use Policy, if they are among our heaviest users for a second time in the following six months, that we reserve the right to suspend their account for 12 months. Again, this is an extremely small number of customers–far less than 1 percent–and is a policy that does not affect more than 99 percent of our customers.
Will there be a usage meter available on Comcast subscriber’s online account information?
Douglas: There are numerous free or fee-based meters that are widely available on the Internet to anyone who wants one.
(Editor’s note: This differs from our unofficial contact who said “Comcast is developing a meter to track your bandwidth.” We’ve got a write-up of ways to do this using various software tools.)
Will you be offering larger bandwidth packages for home businesses or “excessive users?”
Douglas: Our excessive use policy is only for residential service customers. As of today, this policy does not apply to our commercial services customers.
How does this factor in with users of your Digital Voice service? On average how much bandwidth does that service take up?
Douglas: Comcast Digital Voice is a completely separate service and is not a factor.
We’ve also had some questions about the bandwidth averages cited on this page. 2-3 GB median monthly bandwidth seems incredibly low, as does the figure for how large an e-mail is (0.05KB/e-mail). Most messages in my inbox hover between 10-50k. Was it a typo for 0.05MB?
Douglas: 2 to 3 GB/month is the median monthly amount used by our residential high-speed Internet customers. The examples we provided at www.comcast.net/networkmanagement are illustrative of how much activity would be required to reach 250GB in a month. More than 99 percent of our customers do not come close to using more than that amount.
Got any other questions you feel are unanswered? Leave them in the comments and we can send out a second round.
Read the original here:
More tidbits on the new Comcast cap (updated)
Comcast to cap monthly consumer broadband starting Oct. 1
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Starting October 1st customers of Comcast’s residential data services will have an invisible barrier on their monthly data usage. Under the new guidelines of Comcast’s Acceptable Use Policy that cap is now set at 250 GB per month, per account.
Users who go over the limit will get a courtesy call from Comcast’s customer service for the first instance. However, under the new policy a second time offense means their service is immediately terminated and suspended for an entire calendar year.
Surprisingly the company is not providing any tools to help users monitor their current usage. An FAQ on Comcast’s support site simply suggests that customers do a “Web search” for bandwidth metering software that will track this amount for them. Going forward there may be plans to set up alerts over certain thresholds, or bundle some official tool as part of the company’s starter software.
Comcast notes that the median usage for most residential customers falls somewhere between 2-3 GB, a number that is regularly broken within a matter of hours and sometimes minutes by customers taking advantage of streaming HD video and online backup services. The company breaks down basic usage numbers similar to what’s seen on the marketing materials on a consumer hard drive:
* Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
* Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
* Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
A far greater problem may be the slighting of cloud storage services that offer file transfer and back-up. Services like Carbonite and Mozy let you back up and transfer the entirety of your computer’s storage several times per month, which on many standard consumer machines can be in the hundreds of gigabytes.
Apple too is just at the beginning stages of MobileMe, a service that offers sync and file back-up to multiple devices. Additionally, the rumored all-you-can eat iTunes could drastically change how much downloading users are doing on a monthly basis.
So what do you think about this new limit? Let us know in the comments and the poll below.
What do you think of the new 250GB/month Comcast cap? See original here:
Comcast to cap monthly consumer broadband starting Oct. 1
