AT&T’s cellular network in Honolulu failed this morning, disconnecting thousands of customers for at least six hours. (As I type this, service is restored in some areas, like downtown, but not in Mililani.) At first I thought I just missed a bill payment, but it didn’t take long to realize it was a significant service outage. Local users of the Twitter service were chattering and griping about their dead cell phones and iPhones.
Journalist Fernando Pizarro noticed that AT&T had a Twitter account: @ATTNews. He directed a message at the account, and others followed suit. But it became clear that the AT&T Twitter account was being used largely to post links to news releases, much to the frustration of customers who expected a response.
“Excuse me, but is there someone monitoring this account?” Pizarro tweeted. “I’m glad to read about holiday tips, but can I get a response?”
“You’ve got big problems in Hawaii right now. Are you aware/working on it?” tweeted Star-Bulletin business reporter Erika Engle. “I mean, seriously, Twitter is all about engagement, not seagulling messages and ignoring your Tweeps. I’m a customer!”
Fortunately, someone at AT&T was monitoring Twitter for mentions, and soon Lisa Weser replied to Pizarro: “I’m working on a Hawaii ATT contact for you.”
Within the hour, the @ATTNews account on Twitter responded. “Hawaii Customers: Our technicians are working as quickly as possible to restore service. We apologize for this disruption of service.” A subsequent update minutes later explained the outage was caused by a power issue in the Mililani area. And the latest note invited feedback: “We’re working on it. Tweet us when you notice service is back up.”
Ultimately, it looks like the largely one-way, press-release driven AT&T Twitter account not only “woke up” and became responsive, but went a step further to ask customers for updates — all within a couple of hours.
“Engagement is what Twitter’s all about. Also, accountability when things go wrong,” Engle later tweeted to @ATTNews. “Thx for engaging w/your Hawaii customer base!”
Of course, KGMB and KITV, also active on Twitter, were part of the conversation as well. As their newsrooms got updates from their own AT&T contacts, they instantly passed the information along. Twitter users were thus among the first to know that the system should be back up by 1 p.m., and that customer service would give one-day service credits ($3 to $25) upon request.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Paula // Nov 20, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Go Honolulu Tweets! I wonder if the outage was linked to the power outage Central Oahu experienced last evening?
Newsies like me can count on Twitter Friends for instantaneous situational awareness. Will there be a story in print?
2 Fernando Pizarro // Nov 20, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Ryan: I’m going to post this on my Facebook profile, LinkedIn, and retweet your message!
This should be required reading for any company that ventures into social media thinking it’s only a one-way street.
Thanks for the mention. It was great fun participating in an exercise of Twitter power!
Fernando
3 The Power of “I’m Sorry” and Actually Listening: The AT&T Outage Story « Capsun’s Corner // Nov 21, 2008 at 7:55 am
[...] great coverage of the outage, check out Ryan Ozawa’s blog post about it. I was actually planning to say much of what he said, but he published his post while I was still [...]
4 A Maui Blog // Nov 23, 2008 at 5:34 am
did it happen again early Sunday morning? I couldn’t connect to many of you for a while…
5 patrick // Nov 30, 2008 at 11:26 am
If any one knows blogs that refer AT&T, and these questions; the type of “best practices” or productivity improvement projects that are actually being installed, the estimated cost of such projects, and their completion times. Please respond.
(patsanders55@yahoo.com)
6 AT&T Unleashes the Power of Twitter in Hawaii // Dec 3, 2008 at 6:17 am
“This should be required reading for any company that ventures into social media thinking it’s only a one-way street.”
Completely agree, that’s why I referenced this story in a recent blog post. It’ll be interesting to see if AT&T will use more two-way Twitter power in the near future.
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