BigPond launches Twitter support

Australia's largest internet service provider, Telstra's BigPond, yesterday launched an online support channel that uses the increasingly popular Twitter micro-blogging service.

BigPond's Twitter channel
(Credit: Renai LeMay/ZDNet.com.au)

The service, being run by BigPond's email support team, will monitor Twitter posts that mention any potential support issues among BigPond customers. Once it detects an issue, the team will use Twitter to contact the customer and offer assistance.

"We've already had eight responses," Telstra spokesperson Peter Habib told ZDNet.com.au today, adding in two cases BigPond had been able to use Twitter to resolve the problems.

Telstra's move follows similar initiatives overseas, where companies have started to monitor Twitter posts for potential complaints about their company. However, the telco is the first known case where a large Australian company has started to use Twitter to deal directly with customer complaints.

"As an internet company it makes sense for us to do this," said Habib. "For us to pioneer something like this and to have good results straight away shows that it's working for us." Habib pointed out BigPond was also pursuing other support experiments such as opening a customer centre in virtual world Second Life.