Jessica Thrasher ^JES,Philip Schmelzer ^PHL and Amanda Kinley ^AK, and me (Shaan Hurley) ^PitA

If there was ever a reason to jump on Twitter, @AutodeskHelp is one of them. Autodesk has a team that assists people in social media. They do not avoid a challenge and just take the easy ones but also actively engage those with highly charged tweets as those usually only take some personal assistance and attention to solve their problems, or just point them in the right direction.

I was in San Francisco this Monday and Tuesday and finally met in person with the @AutodeskHelp team’s US members. This team is doing amazing things that more companies should be doing and that is use the power of social media to engage and assist  customers. Simply put they are in the right place, doing the right thing.

I know and have used Delta Airlines Twitter account @DeltaAssist to solve my travel problems before and I know personally the power of that connection. The simple personal attention and assistance certainly improves my perception of those companies that do this type of proactive assistance in social media.

It can be difficult to quantify the value of social media support to a bean counter type, but one can easily make the argument not doing it results in lost opportunities to make people happy and keep customers. It is far cheaper to retain a customer than acquire a new one. Dropping a social media support and engagement connection can be a real negative PR event as well. Just ask Comcast about when they dropped the person behind @ComcastCares Frank Eliason, and how years later they still feel the heat and have resurrected the social media account.

If I get back to visit the Autodesk Singapore office again, I will certainly give the same in-person kudos to the Singapore based members of the @AutodeskHelp team ^JB, ^APB & ^MA (chili crabs mmmm omnomnom.)

Check out the Autodesk Assistance Team’s blog
http://blog.autodeskhelp.com/

Keep up the great work @AutodeskHelp Team!

Cheers,
Shaan