.: ntl community :.
I want to talk to customers officially. Now I can actually go and listen on calls at our call centres however that's not really my skillset and thats not the type of conversation I want to have.
This blog is perhaps a way of having conversations but again not officially and I have to be careful what I say.
However ntl has now created an official site to have conversations with customers. It replaces a 'critical' site http://www.nthellworld.com that was bought from its owner last year (I think). Frank now works for ntl and has built Community.
Now the closure of the nthellwolrd site has led to other customer sites springing up in its place e.g. http://www.nthellworld.co.uk but there are also other help sites such as Chetnet where people can gain support and are not so critical.
Getting to my point though - I want to have conversations about products, about service and about future ideas with customers. I want to be able to review these conversations, use the ideas and where possible act on them and advise customers of the actions. The above site usually work on an individual customer basis although I would like to work more generically.
Some colleagues do do this but usually on a local basis. My manager is involved in most of these site (especially Chetnet) to have support conversations and often falgs back generic issues - technical and support.
What's missing is the marketing element (and I use that in its truest sense of marketing, rather than advertising). I discussed this with one of my Product Management colleagues (I work in Product Development and Enhancements) and he agreed in principle thhat this was an ideal site to try and start conversations but he wanted to make sure he was conversing with a representative sample of ntl customers. The problem he felt with sites like nthellworld was that they are full of very vocal, very opinionated, and often experienced users, rather than a cross spectrum of customers. That is not to criticse those people or to say we don't want to have conversations with them however they can tend to give you a biased view of customers.
His view is wait and see the type of forum that emerges on community (it hasn't opened yet - for one reason or another). I see his point but I'd like to get stuck in and see what happens from the start.
And to those who are disolusioned with this whole affair, please remember there are a lot of ggod, hard working people at ntl, who despite a lot of issues do their best to help customers. They and I know ntl's faults - and its not a conspiracy theory to drain more money from customers. Its the mistake and mismangement scenario.
Its improving and thats why I want to have the conversations. To tell people and to perhaps understand what else I can do.
Posted by Paul Goodison at July 4, 2003 09:37 PM | TrackBack