Hopefully the power’s on at your place

OPINION

This time round we managed to avoid the chaos by a street or two but I vividly remember the big six-week blackout Auckland suffered all those years ago.

Not only did I work on Queen Street, but my wife and I lived on Queen Street in a great apartment that was close to the cafes and bars. Yes, it was BC – before children.

Back then we relied entirely on the TV, radio and papers for updates, tuning in at the top of the hour to find out what was going on. Not much, it seemed, for quite some time. Fortunately we had a building manager who was smart enough to get a generator organised ahead of time so we were pretty good right through.

These days I turn first and foremost to Twitter for my news and instead of waiting for the media reports, I get it straight from the horse’s mouth. In this case, that’s the @vectorltd account.

I’ve manned the social media desk myself during a big incident. In my case it was at Vodafone and I looked after early snows in the South Island cutting off communities through to the first Canterbury earthquake.

Such events take on a life of their own and it’s easy to get swept away with it all. Some customers will be angry, some frustrated, some just confused. Each one needs to be dealt with professionally and courteously and as an individual.

When you’re answering the same question for the hundredth time with the same non answer, it’s all too easy to lose your cool, but that doesn’t help someone who is struggling for information.

My hat’s off to the Vector team who are doing a splendid job of dealing with the unpleasantness, remaining calm but not aloof and injecting some personality into the stream. They’ve got the tone down pat but also aren’t resorting to corporate speak – if someone thanks them, they’re taking the time to say “you’re welcome” and it’s details like that which will encourage customer to think positively during a difficult time.

There aren’t too many corporates that do this kind of thing well. Some are stymied by in-house red tape (sign off procedures tend to make life impossible for most corporates that want to get involved)  or by an overly protective brand manager, some are rightly not willing to engage at that kind of level.

But if there’s one thing social media is good for, it’s breaking down the façade of corporate-ness that inhibits a lot of companies. Inhibits because when customers want to talk to you, wouldn’t it be a good idea if you talked back? Why would you miss the opportunity to engage?

Years ago I remember the Air New Zealand twitter account took something of a pounding when it launched a new online service that was immediately swamped by demand. Nobody could get in, orders couldn’t be completed, it was a mess. The Twitter account took a hammering from angry punters but it all changed when the account user tweeted “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”.

Suddenly everyone realised there was a real person on the account, a real person struggling to do the right thing. This wasn’t some corporate screw up, this was people having a bad day at the office. Suddenly the tone of the engagement became supportive, and the account became a lot less stiff and a lot more chatty. Air New Zealand learned a lot that day, and not just about load testing its websites.

Vector’s taken the engagement with customers to a new level with its outage app. Now one of the most popular apps for both Apple and Android users, the app is a great way to get information out to customers and reduce calls in to the 0800 call centre.

The app will push out notifications, tell me what’s going on at addresses I put in (so I’ve loaded my home, office and in-laws’ addresses) and give me all the contact details I need should I have to call in. It reduces the load on the call centre, makes life easier for customers and staff alike and that’s got to be a good thing.

You can imagine there was some concern about building an app that tells customers that something’s broken but I think it’s to be embraced. It’s not as if the customers won’t know the service is down – but as ever, it’s how you fix the problem that’s at the heart of it, and social media plays a major part in that these days.

Paul Brislen is Executive Director at Anthem