The Evolution of a Social Customer Team at BC Hydro

How do you know when it’s time to grow? Social Media has evolved beyond communications as an integral tools in marketing and customer service in most industries, though has lagged in utilities.

We asked Brandon Young, Digital Communications Manager at BC Hydro, to give us a sneak peek of what he’ll talk about at the 12th Social Media for Utilities conference, October 24-25, 2016 in Las Vegas.

Question: When did you decide to use social media in your customer service? 
Answer: Not so much a concerted effort, but an evolution based out of necessity roughly 3.5 years ago. We still don’t actively promote customer service explicitly (on social), but address incoming inquiries.

Question: Is it a separate customer service channel? Or integrated? If integrated, how?
Answer: It’s definitely integrated as we do not have separate social channels dedicated to service. Integration occurs on the back-end with workflows and escalation to SMEs when appropriate.

Question: Have you seen a change in your customer satisfaction since incorporating social media in your customer service?
Answer: I can’t speak specifically to customer satisfaction as it relates specifically to customer service on social media, but we have seen a direct correlation between outage communications on social media and CSAT scores.

Question: What departments and what levels of the organization were necessary to add social into the customer service team?
Answer: Senior communications and customer care.

Question: What special training was required? How long did that take?
Answer: Not a lot, we have bi-annual training sessions with SMEs to give them an update on process and requirements.

Question: How’s it going so far?
Answer: Overall, well, considering factors at play (limited ability to address issues on channels directly).

Meet Brandon Young of BC Hydro and Duncan Acres of Hootsuite as they discuss BC Hydro’s growth in maturity of its social media program, including reflections and learnings from key crisis situations over the past couple of years that influenced BC Hyrdo’s increased investment in its social/digital channels. You’ll also hear about BC Hydro’s partnership with Hootsuite to leverage available technology and tools that support it. Learn more about the conference and Register Here 

 

Brandon leads the digital communications department at BC Hydro, and is accountable for all digital communications, from online accounts to social media and digital marketing. He has led the digital team through crisis situations ranging from reputational threats to major operational disruptions from windstorms and wildfires. Brandon has played a key role evolving multi-channel communication and creating a new team focused on customer experience.

 

 

 

 

Duncan’s focus at Hootsuite has been on social media strategy for Utility and Energy brands across North America. For more than 3 years, he has helped more than 50 brands implement and executive social media strategy that focused on streamlining communications, social customer support, and advanced analytics with a focus on ROI from social efforts.