Reliance Comm Launches SmartCare on Twitter; Recharge Phone with a Tweet!

Anil Ambani owned Reliance Communications has announced a step into the Digital Social Media Smartcare. What makes the phenomena more interesting is that this is the first time ever in India that a telecom company has closely integrated the services on a social media platform.

Smartcare on Twitter will provide various user account management services to reliance mobile prepaid and postpaid subscribers. To avail the services, you obviously need to be a Reliance user and have a Twitter account as well.

Smartcare eliminates the need to call customer support, which, as most of you know, is quite frustrating more often than not.

What we find really interesting about this is that in just a Tweet to @RelianceMobile;, using specific keywords and hash-tags, you get all the data that you’d need relating to account information such as balance/outstanding amount. You could even take up online recharging from the very same platform.

Here are some of #Hashtags that will enable you get Smartcare services on Twitter:

Recharge	#Recharge	Recharge your account instantly. Just select a recharge voucher from our wide range of products. Moreover, you can view details of recharge vouchers such as talk-time, validity, service usage charges and a lot more before buying them.
	#MyRecharge	Displays last three recharges.
	#TopUp	Check details of various top-up vouchers available.
	#DataPack	Check details of various data vouchers available.
	#NightPack	Check details and avail of various night calling packs
	#OnNetPack	View a list of various special tariff vouchers for Reliance to Reliance calling.
	#UnlimitedPack	Get a list of vouchers with unlimited calling to Reliance numbers.
	#MinutePack	Check a list of minute packs available for recharge.
	#WeekendPack	Enjoy special tariffs for weekends, view list of packs and subscribe to them online.
	#SMSPack	Check best SMS packs available.
	#LOCALPack	Select a pack from the list of local calling packs.
	#STDPack	Get various STD packs as per your need.
	#ILDPack	Get a list of International Roaming plans.
	#BBPack	Get a perfect plan for your Blackberry.
My Account	#Bal	Get your account balance online.
	#DataBalance	Check your internet data balance.
	#MyPlan	Know your base tariff plan details.
	#MyPacks	Keep a tab on the packs you have on your phone.
	#MyData	Allows you to view an estimate of your current data usage.
My Offers	#MyOffers	View and buy offers applicable for your number.
	#Buy <Packname>	Buy packs online.
Value Added Services	#Start	Check popular Value Added Services and subscribe to them online.
	#Stop	If you need to unsubscribe a Value Added Service.
	#MyTunes	Select and subscribe to a tune of your choice.
Help me	#CallMe	To get our customer service executives to get in touch with you.
	#Help	Get quick reference of services or available hashtags.
	#Deregister	Deregister from Twitter Care services.

Once you send out a tweet with one of the hashtags given above, the team at the backend will take care of your requests and reply back to you over direct messages.

This is a double edged sword indeed – because, on Social Media, if the requests are not fulfilled quickly and diligently, it can backfire big time. On Social media, people are quite unforgiving towards brands and one mistake and it can really harm the reputation of the brand1

Many British companies have also shut down their call centres in India due to Customer representative’s incompetency. We just hope that the team at RCOM is qualified and competent enough to solve the queries customers have online. They need to be more efficient than the call centre guys as they would require to write back in.

Announcing the launch of this game-changing service, Mr Gurdeep Singh, Chief Executive Officer, Consumer Business, Reliance Communications, said, “This is part of our endeavor to empower customers, making service and self-help possible on Twitter popular social media platform, creating pride of ownership. This is the country first such initiative by a telecom player, utilizing the Twitter platform, including real-time back-end analytics tracking to enable customers to make informed choices and customize their accounts as per their preferences and usage requirements.” Self-help is indeed the best help, but the platform’s efficiency would decided on that.

Indians definitely spend more time on social media, more so on mobile phones. This transformation has got some good thought put into it. Integrating two widely used platforms is sure to increase engagement and also bring in more satisfaction to the users.

But, like we said earlier, RCOM cannot afford to slip up here…