Meet the Telstra social media team

riveting

How to get customer service from Telstra.

Step 1. Never call their support centre.

Step 2. Try contacting them through Twitter (@BigPondTeam or @Telstra). If they can’t help..

Step 3. Email david.thodey@team.telstra.com with a polite email.

breaking the stereotypes!

I am the social media team at my organisation (or rather the one I work for) – the team is fantastic and love the video – i’m sure their customers appreciate the opportunity to meet them and get a few funny insights into some of the banter!

“We’re basically… a bunch of stereotypes.”

Now I know you. I’d like to apologies for all the swearing and name calling 🙂

I have accounts with optus and telstra. Fair to say I have had issues with both. Recently I vented my frustration on twitter for two separate problems. Optus tweeted back, called me, sorted the problem. Telstra? Tweeted me back, emailed me and then, crickets. Optus 1 Telstra 0.

Great to meet the team like this, they’re certainly a shining example of how to handle customer service in the social space. Nice work.

wow I wondered what David Brent was up to these days – now I know!

Maybe they should offer their team some healthy lunches

Big fan of the Telstra guys – best memory I have was one of them responding with a Futurama quote in reply to a tweet from me to Telstra’a head of social media Kristen Boschma.

Oh, and that time Telstra helped me out massively when I put a call out for assistance through Twitter: http://www.warlach.com/2010/02.....e-funeral/ (and the followup http://www.warlach.com/2010/02.....ospective/)

Whatever you say about the company, the social team do fantastic work.

They all have great faces for Twitter.

Whats that saying??

“Now there’s a face for twitter…”

Tim

Was that a double meaning when you said that no other organisation could boast a team this large?

It’s just Telstra employing a band to entertain customers while the good ship Titanic goes down. So glad to see the exhorbitant fees I pay being put to good use..

Still won’t stop my commitment to never spend another cent with the company in my life time once I come off contract.

This is the face of Telstra’s brand online.

Thom – way to get personal about it. Make a comment about what they’re doing for the business but let’s remember these are real people with feelings.

Clearly Telstra appreciates the importance of being human in their social media dealings. I follow one of their Public Affairs and Media Manager on Twitter, @martinhbarr, to keep my finger on the Telstra pulse.

I’ve been impressed with Optus’ work also — especially their funky Youtube video on social media use in Australia. Check it out here: http://www.sr7.com.au/?p=248

My one or two experiences with @telstra have both been fantastic. The rest of Telstra’s ‘customer service’ could learn a thing or ten.

On Mumbrella and other advertising blogs a common complaint of new creative is that it may be good but it doesnt actually reflect the reality of the prodcut/service or the company selling the prodcut/service. I fear social media/twitter is also guilty of this. The customer service that organistaions tweeter accounts provide is not reflective of the general customer service that is provided and which 99.9% of all customers receive. My experience of Telstra’s customer service or lack of it was a 4 week nightmare of no broadband.
The easy option would be for me to switch all customer queries via Tweeter, however, if everyone did this it woudl be mereely switching the problem form one team to another team and the smiles of the 4 happy campers in the video would quickly dissappear as theri workload multiplied, and probably their roles would also disappear to an offshore customer centre.

Adam – that video you posted is classic as it links to one of Tims other articles … check it here: https://mumbrella.com.au/20-copycat-ads-34855#more-34855

Optus are producing creative / content that is a copy of Sprint in the US.

wonder if optus paid to use the deadmau5 track on that video

@fraser… so true…

Did Telstra even authorise this? It appears very unprofessional….snore.

It reminds me of an episode of that show The Office.

I would love to see a reality TV show based on this group, would be heaps of fun! No wonder they all giggle a lot, they just have fun all day!

@Thom – agree! It’s hard sitting at a computer all day, you have to really set your mind to eating healthy.

I think Tom (post #2) makes a really valid point. Were it not for the – percieved? – power of social media in disceminating negative customer feedback then it is unlikely Telstra would ever have created a social media team (although judging by this clip a more appropraite name for this team would be ‘capable customer service’).

That said, just because it feels like a bit of a sideways customer solution it doesn’t mean Telstra weren’t right to create this team. No doubt this group do some really excellent work on behalf of Telstra’s customers – and for that they should be congratulated.

Hmmm can’t wait for the next episode. Do they seriously have this much time on their hands.

Poor Dylan really didnt want to be there did he, at least he likes a brutal band \m/

Hammertime — you’re quite right, they do have a similar look and feel. However, they’re certainly not stealing content, as Optus’ ad uses stats drawn from ABS data and is very focused on the Australian market.

Where creative is concerned though, who’s to say. As Tim’s other article points out it may not be IP theft but coincidence. If anyone has a claim to this concept I’d say it’s Socialnomics who did a similar piece on Social Media (here: http://www.sr7.com.au/?page_id=11)

I’d say so long as these businesses aren’t competing for the same customers in the same market, there’s no harm done.

@adam joseph

Oi! That’s my name!!!

No communication from Telstra on job cuts
http://www.abc.net.au/news/sto.....026225.htm

Telstra has outlined plans for cost cutting, sparking concerns that up to 6,000 people could lose their jobs.

“Currently we’re going through a redundancy process whereby around 1,000 workers are being made redundant, and that’s in the period July this year to December this year,”

Yesterday, Telstra announced the closure of its Grafton call centre with the loss of just over 100 jobs.

“Sometimes where there’s smoke there is fire and this is a company that has made around 50,000 employees redundant over the last 10 years or so”

/end

I think they Telstra has its staffing priorities very very wrong.

Adam Joseph, you also make an excellent point.

I’ve anticipated this encounter, but not in cyberspace. I’m enjoying the irony of a couple of media specialists meeting through online comments on an internet media media piece about copycats. I confess I have Googled our name and was aware of your work via LinkedIn.

Here’s a pointless stat for you (sorry everyone else, this must be boring unless, like me, you’re a fan of Adam Joseph’s prose). According to LinkedIn, 42 of my contacts know various of yours, but none of mine know you directly (at least not on that social media platform).

How about a LinkedIn group for Adam Joseph to foster debate on our favourite topic, and maintain the standards of excellence for which we’re known? It would be a lonely Australian chapter though, comprising just you, me, and Adam Joseph (see: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/di.....ind_others)

Kindly remove your photo from articles you publish in B&T magazine…I quite like them.

Yours truly (et&c)

Dear Telstra Social Media Team

You should ignore what some of these terrible people have to say.

They can be cruel and they like to drink. It brings out the worst in them. They feel terrible about the things they say when they sober up, but it doesn’t excuse them.

You can tell who has ‘mother’ issues. It’s sad. But he’s just lonely and strikes out in anger.

And there’s one of them who has no real friends, you can tell.

And the other guy, he’s just jealous because you all have real jobs and seem to like each other. People who work in agencies all secretly hate each other. It’s true; you should hear what these people say about their colleagues when they drink. I’m going to start making tape recordings. Not that I want to go all Richard Nixon on them. But they have it coming.

Honestly, I don’t know how they sleep at night. All I know is that it will never be with me.

I think you all look lovely. One of you has a really nice smile. You know who. I don’t need to name names.

Thank you for being you and not pretending to be anything more than who you are. It’s really a change for the good. It’s so fake out there, so this is a good thing. You know what I mean.

X

Lavinia.

no company is perfect, but recently had the opportunity to hear more about Telstra’s strategy at a presentation that Kristen did, and I think they are leaps and bounds ahead of others and the other nice thing is that they were willing to share what they’ve done well in the social media space and what they’ve done not so well. I applaud their willingness to explore this space, as I know all too well that other organisations just go as far to block social media sites for their employees and that’s it.

@Adam Joseph

It’s very nice to meet you in cyberspace. How old are you? It’s just that I reckon I’m older than you which means I had the name first. No hard feelings – I believe it’s relatively cheap to change a name by deed poll these days. Good onya! 🙂

Seriously though, I reckon the media and marketing community is big enough for two Adam Josephs. I’ll try not to drag your name and reputation down too much with my lewd comments and uninformed opinions on this forum.

BTW, liked your idea about forming a group. We should go one step further and have a doppelganger (re)union of some sort, although I’d pity the poor soul who has to manage the guest list for this (“Oh no – Adam Joseph can’t make it!)

Sincere apologies to all those here to read comments on Telstra’s social media team. It might be a Big Pond, but it’s a small world for us Adam Josephs.

Thom and Dave – don’t be narky and rude re people’s appearances – they’re just people and don’t deserve rudeness or personal insults

Looks a bit like they rounded up some IT guys and said ‘who here knows how to use Twitter?’ … good idea but a bit bland for a fun social media idea – I would have liked to see then a bit less staged … maybe tweeting etc! And at 8 minutes … yawn

At least they are trying…..

5 points for that….

I tweeted these guys 2 days ago and nothing but DEAD silence.

Good work so far guys.

I get excellent support from my ISP (TPG) through Whirlpool. It’s the ideal place for troubleshooting, since seeing other people’s issues and solutions prevents the customer service people from having to give the same advice multiple times. And you can quickly see if the problem is just with your connection, or if the whole network/node is down.

And pm is the perfect way to contact the representatives directly.

With Twitter, unless someone has added you, you can’t pm them directly.

Self importance overload!