One Million and Growing – An interview with @BlackBerryHelp
Just over a year ago, @BlackBerryHelp reached the 500,000 follower mark, and on October 30th, 2012, they surpassed one million followers!
For those who are unfamiliar with @BlackBerryHelp, this Twitter® account is managed by a group of dedicated BlackBerry® Support staff who engage with BlackBerry customers around the world to help support BlackBerry products and services. (For international readers, Spanish support is offered via @AyudaBlackBerry as well Indonesian support from @BlackBerryBantu!)
Brian, from the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog, sat down with Michele and Brian from @BlackBerryHelp to talk about their team.
Thanks for taking the time to meet with me, Michele & Brian. My first question to kick things off here is pretty simple: Can you tell me about the team as well as a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with social support?
Michele: Counting myself, the @BlackBerryHelp team consists of 12 individuals based out of Halifax, Canada, working around the clock to help #TeamBlackBerry get the most from their BlackBerry devices.
Brian: I am one of the original @BlackBerryHelp team members and have been a part of the team for over three years now. I started out with RIM working in telephone support before joining the @BlackBerryHelp team. Assisting customers over the phone helped me with my customer service and technical skills. These skills have been very valuable in providing the best support possible through @BlackBerryHelp. In three years, it’s been incredible to see us grow from a few thousand followers to over one million this week.
Michele: My primary role as a team leader of the @BlackBerryHelp team is managing and monitoring team performance and our customers’ expectations. In addition to Twitter, we’re also active on Facebook®, the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog and the BlackBerry Community Support Forums. Our customers’ expectations are changing, and as more people contact us for support on social media we want to make sure we’re able to respond quickly and effectively.
That leads me to another question that I’m sure many of your followers wonder: @BlackBerryHelp responds to hundreds of tweets per day?! What does it take to respond to all those tweets?
Michele: On a weekly basis, BlackBerry social channels receive over 16,000 inquiries from customers, so it takes a great deal of passion and BlackBerry knowledge to respond to our customers quickly so that they can get on with their day. We work together with our other social media properties to answer our customers’ questions without them having to pick up the phone.
@BlackBerryHelp added its 500,000th follower in 2011 and just hit one million followers roughly a year later. Have there been any other standout moments for your team in the past two years?
Brian: The very fact that we hit one million followers is an incredible accomplishment in itself considering when I started with the team we had only three team members and just over 3,000 followers. But one of the best moments for me was when our @BlackBerryHelp customers nominated us to win a Shorty Award in 2010 for providing Customer Service through Twitter.
Michele: Along with our second Shorty Award win for Best Use of Social Media for Customer Service in 2011, we were also recognised by socialfresh.com for being one of the Top 10 brands on Twitter for 2011. It’s been an exciting few years for the team!
What’s in store for @BlackBerryHelp in 2013?
Brian: Bigger is better, but we also want to make sure that we are responding to the individual behind every inquiry we receive. Through Twitter, we’re able to help more of our customers than ever, but keeping that feeling of a one-to-one conversation is a big priority for me.
Michele: That’s a great question! Part of my role is to think ahead to the second million followers, and make sure that #TeamBlackBerry continues to get a world-class experience in every interaction as our social media presence grows. I’d encourage all of you to continue following us to witness the evolution of our @BlackBerryHelp account!
