It would seem Rogers is going the route of Comcast, Dell, et al, with their jump into the Twitter based customer service realm. I found this out the other day, when – after complaining about cell providers (as I’m known to do) – @RogersMary sent me this message:

I’m not going to lie – I was taken a little off guard. The last thing I expected was Rogers to seek me out and ask what my concerns were (on Christmas Day no less!). But after some back and forth I emailed Mary with some thoughts. The real question is what they do with that information now.

As my problems with Rogers weren’t tangible issues like incorrect billing or bad customer service, and had more to do with a lack of competition between the major providers, I’m curious how they’ll respond. Will they earnestly look at resolving the negative attitude nearly everyone has for their cell phone providers or is this just an exercise in good PR optics?

I have a feeling Roger’s Twitter presence is more to deal with high level issues like where to pay bills, service outages, etc. and doesn’t really exist to monitor their brand’s reputation. And that’s unfortunate because a lot of valuable information could be gleaned from channels where people are offering unsolicited and honest opinions.

This is a new age of exposure for companies and as it’s been said countless times in countless books and blogs, people are talking about big brands in both good ways and bad. Some companies like Zappos and Jetblue are diligent with brand management and seem to really care about their reputation while others seem apathetic at best.

But will 2010 be the year that massive companies with cushy monopolies (like Rogers) take this seriously or are they just playing in the space because everyone says they should?

What do you think?