Scouring about 10,000 blogs, hundreds of forums, thousands of tweets and responding to them all in a full days work, the busy Comcast Digital Care team of 10 is making a huge impact how companies view customer service.  From a finance guy, to the guy in the spotlight Frank Eliason and his team have changed the way companies are using social media.

It all began in September 2007, when Frank reached out to a blogger who was a Comcast customer. Frank would seek information on the blogger, find their number and personally call them to help out in any way he could. During our interview he stated this, “Why do people blog? There’s a key reason people blog and it’s because they want to be heard. And when you actually respond to them, they love it.” So, Frank changed his tactic and started responding to posts instead of calling. As Frank responded to bloggers, people loved it and Comcast loved it…soon after that the hiring process of the Digital Care team began. He started looking into spaces like Facebook and Twitter and began listening. He quoted, “One of the key things for businesses is you have to listen to engage, you have to know the space. So, we started listening in those spaces. At the same time I was doing a daily newsletter to share the stories. I’m a firm believer,  one of the best ways to improve is to tell the customer story in their own words. Facebook, which is not very searchable, although they have changed a bit, it’s the status updates that show people’s true feelings, but if they don’t make it public you can’t see it. Twitter on the other hand you can search everything, so Twitter ended up being extraordinarily useful. Kind of like how we reached out to people on blogs through the phone, we did the same thing on Twitter”

I next asked him what his thoughts were on Best Buy’s Twelpforce. He responded, “I like their approach a lot. In fact, one of the things I say a lot is no matter what your employees are going to be using social media, so teach them how to use it and encourage them to be out there. I think any new way of doing things and thinking outside the box is a great thing to be doing.” After I asked this question, I wondered if he has a specific person or company that he believes uses social media in an innovative way that he learns from. “You basically hear 3 companies when you hear social media which are Comcast, Ford and Zappos. I love what Scott Monty has done with Ford. He is doing a much more marketing side to it and he is doing a really nice job of finding ways to use the space and doing it in way that is engaging conversation. Zappos is really the ideal in my opinion. They teach all their employees how to use social media and they offer the tools to help them. I find that model so important because your employees are already out there. They are in social media, look at the sheer numbers. If you help your employees, they can make it a better experience and Zappos has done a great job of doing just that.”

Frank also talked about the main topic all companies are interested in…ROI! Which he said, “ROI is definitely something you hear a lot, especially from marketers. PR asks a different question which is ‘What has this done for our sentiment?’ Sentiment is a key measurement and there is also ROI involved, it just depends on how you measure it. It could be sales if that’s your goal, but you could easily look at customer satisfaction. As you engage these customers they get to know you and it creates a comfort level. Most companies survey their customers, you can easily add a yes or no question like, “Are you involved in social media like Facebook?” And now, easily you can track customer satisfaction for people in social media versus those that are not in social media. Just with that simple question, not only are you impacting the people you are reaching out to, but truthfully you’re impacting everyone who knows about you. We actually gain a lot of feedback which has helped change Comcast, so as we strive to improve service we get this feedback and we are able to make concrete changes that are measurable just from feedback from social media and this is how we measure it.”

I asked him what he thought of people who say social media is a trend and won’t last. He responded, “Remember when email first came out in the business world? Companies did not embrace it. In fact many, companies did not have it for internal usage let alone external. They looked at email very much like people look at social media today. At this point, I don’t think there’s a company around or a person around that can really go on without having email.  Social media could be for everybody, but there are going to be different types of comfort levels. You’ll have some people who say, “I like it to share with people I know, but no one else” which are places that can be set to private. Then you’ll have the larger group who thinks, “Hey, I want to put it out there because I want to be able to communicate with people because it is a little easier than email”. When we talk social media we always think Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. but, think about how you buy products. One of the things you most likely do, if you’re like me, is you visit review sites and read what other people are saying, that is also social media. People I know that aren’t involved in social media, still do that whether it is just reading them or writing the actual review. I think that social media is around to stay, but how you touch and feel it, that may be a little different.”

Now that social media is here to stay and companies are now realizing they need to tap into the space, I asked Frank what he thought companies will be doing. “I think that they know they need to do something, they just don’t know what to do. I think there are a few things going on, you have marketers who just want to go into the space and sell, when really this space is about a conversation. Sometimes what I will do when I am speaking to marketing or at a function I will ask the question, “Who in the room owns social media?”, marketing and PR raise their hands, but very few put it up for customer service. I follow the question answering, “None of these departments own social media, the customer owns social media.” And that is something that has to be understood, put the control and the power aside.”

As a customer of Comcast, and a happy customer, I often use social media to communicate with Comcast customer service when I need to talk to someone. I love it! If you have ever Tweeted Comcast, then you know the response will come in no less than 5 minutes. With over 34,000 followers on Twitter that’s pretty impressive! Thanks Frank for the great interview, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me!