UPDATED: Eurostar launches new official corporate Twitter account but is it enough?

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of the Eurostar disruption just before Christmas and the role of social media. When five trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel the company was bombarded with posts on social networks and was eventually forced to turn what were originally set up as purely marketing Twitter feeds into a channel for communicating vital information to its customers and other interested parties.

Two weeks after the incident Eurostar didn't seem to have learned its lesson but look what I spotted today:

Yes, Eurostar has launched an official corporate Twitter feed. Hippody-do-dah!

It has yet to be confirmed whether the account is run from inside Eurostar or by external agency We Are Social which set up its original marketing feeds but it is a very welcome development.

On the downside however, customers could still be left confused.

According to the account's bio, @eurostarcomms will be used for "key service updates and announcements" but @little_break and @creamoflondon, the two accounts with perhaps the least obvious Twitter names in the world, will be those which "help individual customers":

The move is a good step but it will be interesting to see whether the strategy will have to change again. Customers seeking information from Eurostar on Twitter are unlikely to guess a handle such as little_break and creamoflondon but before criticising too much, let's wait and see what happens.

UPDATE (16/02/10)

Since my last blog, the bio for @eurostarcomms has been updated:

Some tweets from customers also suggest, as I predicted, there is confusion over which account to contact with Eurostar-related queries:

It is clear that Eurostar is trying to work out its Twitter strategy and a reflection of how long it can take for a large corporate to embrace the concept of social media engagement. Should it maintain three accounts or should everything be handled by @eurostarcomms? For me it's simple; either rename @little_break or @creamoflondon as something more obvious or let everything Eurostar-related be dealt with by @eurostarcomms.