Virgin Media Business

The Virgin Media Business Twitter account demonstrates excellent customer understanding says James Weatherill, head of B2B at Mindshare UK.

URL: twitter.com/vmbusiness
Followers: 3439
Following: 1713
Tweets: 2286

Support is going social, with reports claiming social media will become as important in customer services as email and phone are today. An excellent example of this is the Virgin Media Business Twitter page. Virgin Media is a UK telecomms and media company, which has recently been bought by Liberty Global. Virgin Media was formed by the merger of NTL, Telewest and Virgin Mobile UK in 2006.

Direction

Virgin Media Business’ Twitter feed is a mix of customer service and promotion of content from its website. Its customer service presence is approachable and shows responsive attention to detail, noting a tweeter’s previous query and referring to it when replying: “Hi 

@wayne386 we remember you 🙂 We’re still waiting for the super-fast speeds to be rolled out with static IPs. Keep in touch. CM”. In response to a complaint that:
“@vmbusiness really make my blood boil. Useless!” they acted swiftly garnering the response from the frustrated customer that: “The social media teams are decent :)”.

The help centre also promotes content from the Virgin Media website, posing questions such as ‘Is the high street facing extinction or is #technology its saviour…?’ inviting the reader to find out more. This keeps followers engaged in the page and gives the Twitter feed an ‘always on’ presence. 

It also uses tent pole events such as International Women’s Day as hooks, tweeting about a networking event solely for women, promoted by the parent Virgin Media brand. This indicates it is hooked into the wider communications plans.

Engagement

Twitter is very much an engagement platform and in the realm of customer service Virgin Media Business is using this well. The team has created a dialogue with the customer that cannot be done using other media. Even though it is a dialogue that is available on the web for all to see, in many ways it feels more human and personal than a call centre.

The customer service team copy @richardbranson into their tweets. Not only does this add credibility but shows that engagement in customer services goes directly to the top of the company, reassuring the customer.

To move beyond this customer service and response-led approach, social media must be placed in the centre of your marketing plans. A key way of putting social front and centre is by using analytics and measurement, as I suspect @vmbusiness has done, as is seen by its reference to @wayne386’s earlier tweet. The next stage of this engagement is to encourage customers to participate in the development of their products and services.

Virgin Media Business strikes appropriate notes in terms of understanding the entrepreneurial urge. Using the Twitter feed to talk about networking events, for example, demonstrates it knows the importance of meeting and mingling, for its SME audience.

Another example of this awareness can be seen in their move to enter Telestroke, a customer, into the Computer Weekly awards. This demonstrates a real and deeper level of engagement than you would imagine from a simple Twitter feed and shows joined-up marketing thinking.

Overall rating: 7/10 

1. Clear explanation of what it does: 
“Virgin Media Business is the UK’s only telco with a national fibre optic Next Generation Network. Customer service available from 9am-5pm”, including a link to the web address for Virgin Media Business.
2. Virgin Media Business tweets its own news, providing stakeholders with a direct source of all need-to-know and good-to-know information.
3. It directs those with complaints and queries to the @vmbusinesshelp account but also responds to queries sent to their own account.

 

 

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