Comcast's Twitter Guru on Comcastcares' Tipping Point

If you’ve read anything about how companies are harnessing Twitter, chances are Frank Eliason, under the name “comcastcares,” has been mentioned.

He calls himself as “a simple customer-service guy” (not unlike Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who goes by “customer-service representative”) and said at yesterday’s Federated Media conference that his team fields several hundred tweets a day. He receives about 200 private messages a day through the microblogging service, a mix of customer-service issues, spam and feedback on other Comcast Twitterers.

Mr. Eliason has only been with Comcast (CMCSA) for a year and a half, originally managing a small customer-service group at the cable provider’s Philadelphia headquarters. His team tiptoed into social media by contacting bloggers (by phone) who complained about service problems, but watched Twitter for about two months before doing outreach there.

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