Frontier’s social agenda

These links may or may not come from social networking sites, but the chat feature is becoming more prevalent either way. Lynn Holmgren, vice president of residential sales and customer service at Frontier Communications, said that within two years the Web will be the primary vehicle for customer care, and that social-media channels will pick up. However, Frontier is a good example of how social media as a customer-service channel may not be right for everyone — at least not right now.

As stated earlier, customers are leading the way with social media — they can’t be led to it. In Frontier’s case, social gets mixed reviews. As a customer-care channel it is premature. However, it is useful for communicating to customers on a local and regional level. Frontier is a provider to rural America and has a very localized market, with general managers who have responsibility for their own territories. For them, social media is most useful as a public relations tool and as a way to communicate technical or local event information to the physical community.

In addition to being a useful PR tool, Holmgren said social media helps Frontier provide resource-strapped small businesses with useful information such as computer security tips and other consultative advice, as well as attract and serve particular market segments within local communities, e.g., military veterans.

She sees social media as problematic when it comes to customer care because often it is hard to tell who a company is dealing with in a social-media setting. “Sometimes you don’t have a real name. Given our laws on safeguarding accounts and making sure we are having a one-to-one discussion versus a one-to-many discussion, it becomes more difficult in the care environment,” Holmgren said. “So we try to intervene when we see an issue and bring them off social media into a one-to-one conversation. We cannot have a big dialogue about your bill in a public forum. It’s both inappropriate and against the law.”

Besides, she said, the problems are quite complex, and you can’t always solve them in 140 characters or less. It’s also different for, say, packaged-goods companies. “If somebody has a complaint about Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, that’s not their personal account; there is no information on there that people would be upset about. We have a higher standard of care for that reason.”

Frontier does respond to the social-media channels, but by inviting customers to have a conversation. Holmgren also puts her own contact information out there so the public can reach her.

As a rural carrier, she said Frontier’s customer base is not demanding a social channel the same way major metro areas might. “In rural communities they are relatively savvy about technology; they won’t be ... early adopters who live their lives vicariously on Facebook.

“Our people are trained on these channels, they can take calls and chat, but we’re not fast followers in this space,” Holmgren said. “We will be where our customers go, and today they are mostly calling us by a very wide percentage. We are positioning ourselves to go in that direction, but we are not there yet because our customers aren’t going there.”

Despite its mixed reviews so far regarding performance, there is really only one question to ask yourself regarding social media: do you think it’s here to stay? If your answer is no, then your work is done. But if you agree with the rest of the planet that social media is already ingrained in youth culture as the communications tool of choice, then you have to make some decisions about how to engage customers — and not if, but how much you want to invest in integrating it into your customer communication channels.

If you’re not yet convinced, consider this: A report in October from NM Incite, a social-media research firm, said 47 percent of current social-media users in the U.S. actively seek customer service through the medium, while 30 percent prefer a social channel to over-the-phone help. And here is a look into your future: 18- to 24-year-olds are most likely (59 percent) to seek customer services through social-media channels.