June 18, 2012 -- One of the West’s firms has launched a new arm of its call-centre operations – with employees spending their entire day on Facebook and Twitter.

Dyson has long been renowned for its design innovations but now the Wiltshire company has become one of the first to set up a dedicated social media part of its customer service operation.

The Malmesbury-based company employs more than 150 people at its call centre, answering phone calls from people with queries or problems with their vacuum cleaners.

But now, the firm said it is moving firmly into the era of the social media because its customers are using Twitter and Facebook to get in touch.

A major expansion of the customer service side of Dyson was unveiled last week with an initial 30 extra jobs, but that will increase over the coming weeks as the number of calls the Dyson helpline receives goes way past two million a year.

But the expansion has also included dedicated staff to spend their time working on Facebook and Twitter for the first time. And there is also a team of people who just answer emails from customers, as well as a new live text chat system set up on the website. "We’ve always tried to be different and better than the traditional call centre anyway," explained the department’s boss James Pethybridge. "But the times have changed and whereas five or ten years ago people would have only phoned up, now there are lots of other ways to communicate, so we have to move into those areas too.

"When we first set up the website eight years ago, for instance, we had ten calls for every one visit to the website, now it’s two to one," he added.

Online manager Darren Crook said that initially, like most businesses, Dyson viewed social media like Facebook and Twitter as a place for marketing and social interaction. But now they have customers contacting them via Twitter.

"Twitter is a funny thing because it’s very informal and you can only use a small number of words and a short message. So having a very formal, corporate-style response would seem strange.

"What will happen is if someone somewhere in the world mentions Dyson in a tweet we will see that and maybe respond accordingly. So if they are ranting that their Dyson isn’t working properly, or that they are thinking of buying one, we can suggest that we could help them. Almost all the time, the feedback is positive," he said.

Another Dyson employee runs the Facebook page – dealing with customer problems.

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://www.thisisbath.co.uk