GM is searching for complaints

[DGthe3]

Seems like today is a good news day from GM, from the announcement of more loan payback to the extra shift in Oshawa, now there is this from Autoblog and the Detroit Free Press

Autoblog
File this one under, "See What Happens When You're Hungry?" General Motors has created a dedicated team of customer service agents whose sole job is to track down company and product mentions, good and bad, in the social-mediasphere. If the mention is a bad one, the team will attempt to connect the unsatisfied party with a GM representative who can help resolve the issue.

The revelation underpinning the team's formation is that "GM has found that its customers have higher satisfaction with the company if the automaker is proactively looking to help people." Shocking, we know. It began last summer with another 50-person squad – among GM's five call centers – just doing web chats with people shopping for GM products. After that, five people were pulled together to monitor Facebook, et al to gather references to anything GM.

Not everyone can be helped, naturally, such as the woman griping about her 100,000-mile Cadillac on Twitter. But the fact that GM is reaching out to customers to proactively address issues... well... did any of you see that coming? And it's going so well that the five-person will be expanded come April. Go GM. Finally.


Freep
SAGINAW -- Those comments you posted on Twitter, venting about General Motors products, aren't going unnoticed.

GM has a new team of customer service agents scouring social media Web sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, looking to reach out to people who've complained about problems with their GM vehicles and offering help to them. "You're kind of like a detective having to go through and see what's going on," said Sheri Haefele, one of GM's social media agents based in Saginaw. "It's a lot of sifting but those people are there and they want to be found; they just don't realize that somebody is looking."
It's all part of GM's post-bankruptcy efforts to be more proactive in dealing with customers.

"In the old GM, we said you need to call us or you need to write us a letter. That's not treating them how they want to be treated," Scott Lawson, GM director of customer and relationship services, told the Free Press in an interview. "In the new GM, we're going to be where our customers want us to be." The Detroit automaker expects to double its social media efforts in April, adding new agents and automating more of the process in hopes of reaching more people.

Fed up with her 2001 Cadillac DeVille's mechanical problems, Melissa Walker turned to her usual spot to vent about her experience: Twitter. The Jacksonville, N.C., real estate agent wrote earlier this month that her Cadillac was acting up and that she hated her car. The Tweet quickly attracted the attention of General Motors' new team of social media sleuths, who are searching sites such as Twitter for people's complaints.

An agent followed up with questions about Walker's problems. "I was very surprised. ... I hadn't actually addressed GM or GM customer service or anything -- because I knew there probably wasn't anything they could actually do. It is an older car," she told the Free Press by telephone this week. In the end, the problems weren't covered by any recalls and a solution couldn't be found for the 100,000-plus-mile car, Walker, 32, said. "I really didn't expect much but the fact that I even got the call was pretty impressive."

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[Brokinarrow]

Interesting, good to see a company like GM is willing to dive into the new age of social interaction.