Archive for June, 2010

During a recent thunderstorm, many Duke Energy customers reported their power outages via Twitter. In January of 2009 Duke Energy set up a Twitter account, @DukeEnergyStorm, to keep their customers up to date on power outage problems. Their primary mission was to broadcast outage information. Then last fall they hired Lisa Hoffmann to help manage their social media. She and other staffers do the tweeting during major storms. And they are monitoring the tweets people are sending to them.

Twitter postings are not hindered by power outages if the users are using smart phones or personal computers that run off of battery power. That allows Duke Energy customers the ability to keep up to date with power outage status without making unnecessary phone calls.

This is a classic example of how a customer service company gets time sensitive information to it’s customers. How do you use Twitter for customer service?