Telstra trials tool to mine consumer Tweets

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 07:17

IT Industry - Market

“We will continue to work with industry to address this issue, but as I have previously warned, regulatory options will be considered if consumer interests are not adequately protected,” Senator Conroy warned. He is expected to raise the issue again at today’s Communications Alliance customer service summit.

Against that backdrop, and given the rising incidence of complaints appearing on social networks about telecommunications companies, telecommunications companies are among the first to trial a service which allows them to monitor social networks.

Chris Harrigan, the Telstra account executive for Right Now Technologies confirmed that an Australian telecommunications company was one of the early adopters of the Cloud Monitor service which the company released in Australia this May.

Cloud Monitor allows users to form Cloud Links that let them monitor commentary on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

According to Harrigan; “With cloud monitoring you can monitor sites for positive or negative comments and tweets and respond to those. We have a client in the telecommunications sector using this.”

Identifying the problem is one thing, fixing it another. Australian consumers however seem very open to the idea of companies using their online comments as a springboard for further action.

According to StollzNow’s research, which was commissioned by RightNow Technologies, 60% of Australians reported that they would welcome contact from the organisation to try and resolve the issue they raised on a social networking site. Three-quarters of Australians believe companies should listen to what customers say about their products and services on social networking sites and follow up with the people who have commented.