May 8, 2014
Let it be known that unconventional is de rigueur at Vodafone Australia. After all, condensing Dr Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat into a single tweet could land you a job.
Australia’s No.3 carrier has come a long way since network problems plagued the company a few years ago where it was branded “Vodafail” instead by angry customers, who had no qualms venting their frustration on social media.
Vodafone has since invested heavily in improving network performance and in customer service where it has a strong presence in Tasmania.
It is one of the few organisations with a large, dedicated team handling customer queries and troubleshooting via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Vodafone has 35 agents who only handle social media and are part of a larger customer service team based in Hobart, according to Vodafone head of social Lucie Snape.
The telco has been working with local outfit Bluewolf to execute its social media strategy over the past few years.
On average on a daily basis, Vodafone’s dedicated social media team handles 224 comments on Facebook. 126 tweets and 70 community posts on its customer experience website.
They tackle a range of issues including requests for assistance, compliments and general conversation, sharing news, and community threads with customers discussing topics amongst themselves such as roaming, software updates, new devices and other product and service-related news and views.
The hiring process for these social media experts is rather unique.
Apart from The Cat in the Hat, potential employees might also be asked to summarise Green Eggs and Ham, another Dr Seuss classic.
Written exercises during the interview process are designed to draw out people’s social skills and they might be asked to provide a basic run down of the plot behind Goldilocks or write an advertisement for a door.
Candidates for Vodafone’s social media team must be a jack of all trades and have the ability to properly engage with customers in an open forum.
They must be able to invite people into conversation, build rapport with the online community and explain their actions in a fun and friendly manner, in line with Vodafone’s brand identity.
