"So much cooler online"

The other day, I saw a tweet come across my feed that made me laugh out loud.  It stated:

"I still hate Comcast, but @ComcastMarc_NE makes me hate them less. Good customer service guy." (from @617patrick)

This tweet illustrates that importance of authenticity and ensuring that the interactions that you have online and in social networking as a company align with the reality of your brand.  Comcast has been very successful with using social networking, and specifically Twitter, to improve their customer service.

A banner at Dreamforce evangelized their success story with social media, claiming a 46% increase in their net promoter score as a result of using SalesForce for Twitter to engage with their consumers.  They have a team of customer service reps (like @ComcastMarc_NE) that strictly look for complaints on Twitter (which I can imagine based on the staffing in this organization and my own personal experience that there are many) and start conversations in the attempt to resolve their cable, internet, or phone issues.

However, as we can see (and a lot of us that use Comcast can attest), the offline interactions many of us have with Comcast haven't changed much.  They are giving us one image online with their "Twitter Ninja" team and another one with the contracted technician that visits our home and does very little to meet our expectations.  Are they like the guy in the Brad Paisley song "Online" who works at the Pizza Pit, drives an old jalopy, and lives with his parents yet portrays himself as a hot model from Malibu with extraordinary tastes?



At the end of the day, being successful with marketing in social media requires authenticity, and is not a highly-effective image management mechanism.  Customers today are very savvy and can tell, and in many cases will call us out if we are "so much cooler online."  News does travel fast in the social networking world.  The good news is, if we are authentic online and offline,  serve our followers, customers, and fans well, and deliver on our brand promise in every channel it will do wonders for our brand.  Good news also travels fast.