Vodafone creates its own social forum

Following complaints about Vodafone's network coverage issues on Twitter, Facebook and Whirlpool, the company has launched its own social networking forum called the Community.

(Screenshot by Josh Taylor/ZDNet Australia)

The company said that it had tracked more than 81,000 comments from customers across a range of social media outlets in 2010, and was now working on increasing the social media staff available from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week.

The company decided to create the open forum for customers to share their experiences, and to create a single resource for customers to search through if they experience issues.

"Launching the Community means our customers now have a destination where they can not only let us know what they need or think, but they can share their expertise and experience with other customers," Vodafone director of customer service Cormac Hodgkinson said in a statement.

The forum is broken up into a number of discussion topics including phones, pre-paid and post-paid plans and network coverage. The forum devoted to network coverage is already hosting a number of customers' comments on coverage issues in their individual areas.

Last week, Vodafone Hutchison Australia CEO Nigel Dews admitted that the company had initially failed to appropriately communicate with customers about the telco's network issues last year.