I came across a blog post the other day that highlighted an interesting activity Verizon is toying with at the moment in the social telco space. It’s somewhat tangential to the core of what being a social telco is about, but it’s an interesting model nonetheless and certainly something worthwhile for other telcos to think about. I hope Verizon will be reasonably open about sharing the results of the experiment and what they learn from it.
I have since found the source press release on Verizon.com and there’s some more detail there. Essentially, Verizon has set up online fora for its customers to go and seek out answers to questions or solutions to problems, and many of the responses will come from other customers rather than Verizon employees. The Verizon Community Forums, as they’re known, cover all of the major consumer services Verizon offers, including mobile services, and the front end is split into various product and service categories so you can quickly browse to the one you need help with.
The press release reads, in part:
The Verizon Community Forums have become the company’s hottest online venue for consumers to submit questions, share advice, and get answers about Verizon’s robust portfolio of broadband, entertainment and communication services.
On the forums, customers can interact with each other, ask questions, problem solve, and learn more about the company’s products and services. Answers posted on the forums most often come from the community’s highly active members, referred to as “super users,” an important subset of customers critical to the success of any online community.
According to Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon, the Community Forums have been well-received since rolling out last July, generating more than 10 million page views.
“The Community Forums have spurred interaction among customers because people today expect to be able to find answers to their technical questions online,” said Studness. “The feedback we’ve already received shows that our customers value the personalized peer-to-peer advice and feedback they receive from fellow users.”
The fora aren’t actually all that different from those you find on various other customer support sites, with a good sprinkling of official Verizon personnel keeping an eye on things and picking up on issues that can’t easily be resolved (a set of customers was seeing commercials interrupting and playing over regular programming, for example – something no fellow user can resolve). But ordinary users are providing lots of the answers, including on fairly technical topics.
One of the most interesting aspects – and something which takes this beyond the standard fora and into true web 2.0 territory – is a tool which allows active helpers to accrue “Kudos” by providing helpful answers to others. Part of the site is a “most kudoed users” page which lists the user Justin profiled in the Verizon press release in the number one slot. Kudos (treated on the fora as the plural form of something called a Kudo – a sort of virtual currency) are awarded by members to those who provide particularly insightful answers or solutions. The Kudos have no value beyond the warm and fuzzy feeling and / or sense of satisfaction or pride they engender, but they seem to provide motivation enough, again in true Web 2.0 fashion.
None of this is earth-shattering, and AT&T is doing some similar things with its business customer support, but it is a good example of the kind of thing that’s possible and an encouraging sign that telcos are thinking a bit more imaginatively about some of these issues.
