Social Media & the Customer Experience

Hello, my name is @SITatSafeco. How can I assist you today?

What I’ve Been TaughtWhen asked “What are the principles to

customer service and positive customer experience?”

Answer: Listen Express empathy Resolve the issue

These same principles apply in any social media conversation.

Ways Customers are Communicating

A recent survey by Nielsen Online showed that social networks and blogs are now the fourth most popular online activity, ahead of personal email.

Real World ComparisionCLOSED CONVERSATION OPEN CONVERSATION

One-to-One interaction Online agents required to

respond to call or IM chat. SME’s unable to engage immediately.

No opportunity to take conversation to another channel.

Limited capability to create knowledgebase to share internally & externally.

One-to-Many Agents can choose which

conversation to engage in. SME’s can engage directly.

Opportunity to DM customer to continue conversation over private channel.

Source of knowledge and experience to leverage.

Real World ComparisionWhat It Looks Like

CLOSED CONVERSATION OPEN CONVERSATION

Call Center = Cost Center

Subject to wait time. Longer Average Handle

Time (AHT) to resolve issue.

One and done. No further involvement by agent.

No public identity for others to relate with.

Call Center = Branding Tool

Immediate response from agent.

Minimal handle time to resolve issue.

Able to see impact to other customers

Ability to provide public, transparent face to your customer service.

Ask Yourself How will you receive traditional and social media requests for help?

Perform a social media audit to understand where your customers are talking about products like yours, and set up a monitoring system attuned to those platforms.

How will you triage your social media messages? How will you route and escalate your social media messages? How is that different (or not) from how you treat traditional e-mail

and phone support? How much automation do you want? Do you use a hub-and-spoke system? If so, who is the hub — your

social media manager or community manager? Are you giving Twitter responsibilities to existing phone and e-mail

support reps, or are you hiring specific Twitter response teams? (This will largely depend on the volume of mentions you have and the size of your business.)

How do they work with the rest of the customer service organization? You also need to track workflow statistics on messages — social as well as

traditional — and relate them to your success metrics. You need to have a unified reporting dashboard that integrates statistics for both kinds of support.

Considerations“An army of social-media watchers may prove

to be a very expensive undertaking for a tech company focused on the bottom line”.

Ensure that social media integrates into the overall customer care strategy. In other words - “you need to make sure one hand of your customer care strategy knows what the other hand is doing to ensure a cohesive, effective system”.

Perceived ROIAlthough on its face, it appears that customer

care through social media can generate sufficient cost savings through:

Elimination of call centers Primary applications are free

Companies are realizing that the opposite are true:

Call center personnel can enhance the brand to those that still choose this channel

Twitter & FB are free, but to monitor, filter and analyze the feed is a costly endeavor

Other Challenges How effective would Social Media be

for the support needs of mission critical and first respondent customers ?

Will more product and service providers go onboard with the new approach to CS or will they stay the status quo and remain open to public ridicule?

Summary Promoting a positive brand image

and solving customer problems with less cost than phone or email service.

Better customer relations management to enhance sales and marketing opportunities.

References RightNow-- Customer Service meets social media ttp

://www.rightnow.com/files/whitepapers/RightNow-Social-Contact-Center-White-Paper.pdf

PCWorld “Tech Support goes Social” (article) http://www.pcworld.com/article/224336-2/tech_support_goes_social.html

Parr, Ben (2009/05/09), HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer ServiceRetrieved from http://mashable.com/2009/05/09/twitter-customer-service/

Ogneva, Maria (2010/06/29), HOW TO: Better Serve the Social Media CustomerRetrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/06/29/social-customer-service/

Pieraccini, Roberto (2011/05/05), HOW TO: Build a Mobile App for Better Customer SupportRetrieved from http://mashable.com/2011/05/05/customer-support-mobile-app/