BT to monitor social media use at Olympic park

BT has revealed it intends to monitor conversations on social media channels from the Olympic park in order to react quickly to any complaints relating to its services that could arise, such as its park-wide Wi-Fi service.

With just 17 days until the Games begin the firm's service director for the 2012 Olympics, Gary Symes, explained it will use monitoring technology from Synthesio to react to complaints to both appease consumers and fix problems rapidly.

"We have been working with BT Retail [which already uses the Synthesio tool] to add more information to the platform so we will receive insights on any positive or negative feedback and look for people discussing issues they are having with our services," he said during an event at the Technology Operations Centre (TOC), attended by V3.

"This will help us quickly dispatch staff to the areas where the problems are occurring and contact the person making the complaint directly and try and help them too."

Symes said it hoped the lessons its learns from the use of social media monitoring during the Olympics will be used to help its customers better understand how to best engage with social media users.

The firm also confirmed it has installed some 1,500 access points across the Olympic Park and was is now in the final process of installing and testing the final elements of its network in some of the sites it can now access, such as the Wimbledon tennis venues.

At the same event the chief information officer for the London London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games , Gerry Pennell, confirmed a Windows Phone version of the Olympics Results application will be made available this week.