Company: Time Warner Cable, New York, NY
Company Description: Time Warner Cable Inc. is among the largest providers of video, high-speed data and voice services in the United States, connecting 15 million customers to entertainment, information and each other.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: e-Commerce Customer Service Award

Nomination Title: Time Warner Cable Online Customer Care Team

Tell the story about your e-commerce-based customer service initiatives since the beginning of July 2013 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

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The social media revolution brought about a new avenue of communications for consumers and Time Warner Cable (TWC) recognized that it needed to evolve the way it communicated with subscribers. As one of the largest provider of video, high-speed data and voice services in the country with 15 million customers in 29 states across the U.S., TWC touches the lives of millions of people every day and the need to be able to communicate with its customers easily and conveniently is greater than ever.

In a day and age where consumers are used to and expecting instant attention and timely resolution, a traditional call center with its periodic wait times just aren’t cutting it for today’s tech savvy population. That is why TWC established its Online Customer Care team in early 2010. This team’s goal was to set out to meet customers in their preferred channels and try to give those customers a positive experience – or at least let them know we’re listening.

Led by Phil Blum, who has been leading the team from the very beginning, the Online Care team uses Twitter (it’s main resource), Facebook, third-party forums and the company’s TWC Community Support Forum to get TWC customers support anytime, anywhere and on any device. The team has dramatically changed from the initial four-person team with traditional set business hours to a solid 25-person team that is on call 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, in just five years and has become an indispensable resource to TWC customers.

The members of the Online Care team all come from a traditional TWC customer service call center background and use those experiences and skills to now help resolve customer’s problems via social media. Unlike what some companies’ social media teams who may forward each customer on to someone else for support, this team tries to handle issues that are brought to their attention and on average resolve the problem 75% of the time internally – meaning it does not need to be forwarded to the traditional call center.

Every day, members of the team monitors its dedicated Online Care Twitter handle @TWC_Help, with its more than 50,000 followers, to answer and reach out to customers proactively to reach a resolution for their question or issue. If that wasn’t enough, they also monitor all of the company’s various local Twitter handles including those used by TWC’s HR and Marketing teams. Customer service via Twitter accounts for almost 90% of the team’s interactions daily.

In addition to Twitter, part of the daily routine includes the management of the company’s TWC Community Forum website. Launched in 2013, the Forum is a place for customers to post topics of interest related to TWC services and products to help one another. It is the Online Care team’s job to curate posts, manage relationships with frequent users and, sometimes, step in to answer a question or set the facts straight. In a little over a year, the Community Forum has grown exponentially and continues to grow rapidly.

However, it is not just about resolving customer’s problems on a case-by-case basis for the Online Care team. By being at the forefront of hearing customers’ voices, they are often the first to be able to connect the dots to major service issues, such as an outage, that may be happening in local areas due to the volume of similar problems coming from customers in a certain area. They are then able to pass along this information to the appropriate teams who can address the issue.

An innovative and vital part of Time Warner Cable, the Online Care team is using social media to service the need of our customers and the major accomplishments below in 2014 prove it.

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