PHILADELPHIA - Most afternoons, the Internet in Sarah Chambers' office at iFractal LLC in Center City crashes and leaves her cyber-stranded without e-mail or online communication with clients.
When it happened for the zillionth time a few days ago, Chambers tried something new, once her Web connection reappeared. She shot Comcast a curt public message on the social networking site Twitter:
"My Internet goes out every day at 3:30. Why would that be?"
Frank Eliason, a Comcast Corp. manager in Center City with the daunting assignment of monitoring the nation's blogosphere for venomous posts aimed at the company, answered right away: "That should not be. We should have that looked at. Send an e-mail with account info to We_Can_Helpcable.comcast.com."
Under siege for customer service woes detailed on Comcastmustdie.com and other blogs, the Philadelphia cable giant has gone on the offensive, trawling the Internet for Comcast chatter. Eliason's assignment is very specific: If someone has a Comcast problem and is talking about it online, he contacts that person and offers help.
If Eliason thinks it's an emergency that could spiral into unpleasantness, like an expletive-loaded blog bomb, he gets on the phone and cuts through the corporate red tape.
But a cautionary note: Eliason's quick action and kind words don't necessarily lead to a quick fix, as Chambers discovered.
Eliason's blog spotting is part public relations and part acknowledgment that the Internet is playing a broader role in defining company brands. Technology companies woke up to this fact after "Dell Hell" postings by blogger Jeff Jarvis in 2005.
Comcast executives say the company's customer service problems deepened as it expanded through acquisitions and added millions of high-speed Internet and phone customers. The company, with $31 billion in annual revenue, has leaned too heavily on outsourcers for phone help and repairs, they say.
On Twitter, where users write blurbs on what they're doing or thinking at the moment, a passing complaint can be an early warning signal to Comcast. The site, said Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, is the sort of forum that Comcast should monitor.
"If Comcast can get to those influencers, the complaints will not grow to a full blog post," he said. Eliason has posted about 600 messages, or "tweets," on Twitter.
