Social Media As Customer Service

Social media as customer service is an area that is rapidly developing, throwing up as many complications as there are solutions and it often, understandably, leaves many people scratching their heads. Social media has come along and shaken up everything we know about customer service. It has, in effect, turned it completely on its head. The benefits of social media as a customer service channel are more and more apparent and steadily becoming a necessity for businesses rather than a ‘nice to have’. The fact is that businesses will always have to go where their customers are and right now, these customers are turning to social media.

If you’re a regular user of social networks, you’ll be familiar with people using social media channels in their various iterations, to make complaints, praise companies, open a dialogue around a particular issue or indulge in a slanging match that would turn the air around you a deeper shade of blue. Now for the most part, this is an incredibly good thing. It puts the power into the hands of the consumer and forces companies to do good, not just tell us they do good. Online, there is nowhere for companies to hide. What is increasingly difficult for companies, is to know how to handle their customer service relations through this new medium.

There are no rules

This is perhaps the most difficult thing for companies to comprehend, especially when they’re just starting out in social media. The issue comes from the fact that social media is so vast and sprawling an area, so new to so many of us that most people, when faced with a bad reputation and complaining customers online haven’t got a clue what they can and can’t say and how this should or shouldn’t be said. Many of those well versed in social media like to lecture that it’s just talking to people, but unfortunately it isn’t as simple as that. If a small business owner stumbles across a negative thread in a forum, the chances are that he will have no idea how he can enter the conversation and how he should conduct himself. This is similar for any social media channel, as each has its own subtleties to conform to. The basic rules of disclosing who you work for etc.. are great, but many people don’t even know they have the right to do this. So they say nothing and the problem escalates.

This is a fundamental problem that has no easy solution. Knowing how to handle complaints through social media is something that only comes from experience and if you’re attempting this yourself, then the chances are you’re going to make some very nasty and very public mistakes online. I’ve spoken to people who have made the mistake of posing as a genuine customer to combat a complaint with high (fake) praise. When I’ve corrected them and told them the right, honest way to do it, 9 times out of 10 the answer is that they didn’t even know they could do that. However simple it may seem to those that use social media all the time, this is a problem.

The other problem that is beginning to emerge, is that as more and more companies are engaging with social media to handle complaints, praise, problems etc… we sort of expect them to always be there because, well, we are. The only problem is that for a lot of companies, customer service isn’t ‘always on’ as social media is. Again, there’s no formulaic answer for this. Do you put customer service hours up on your bio, do you send a tweet to let people know there’s no-one there to answer queries? Do you work in your own time to ensure someone’s always there to answer questions? Again there’s no easy solution and this stems from the problem that the functions of a customer service department don’t quite fit with how social media works, so we end up forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Take the speed of communication as an example. Some companies are great at answering queries online – take Peter at Skype for example. It’s not always that straightforward though, unfortunately. Someone making a complaint about a problem with their insurance claim might send a tweet outlining a very important issue. That customer might not see a tweet back until 6 hours later – not great for an instant medium. But what that customer might not know is that with this particular issue, hundreds of customers are actually affected and the person manning the account knew they couldn’t say anything until it had been passed by legal and the complaint had been followed up in full. On the surface, it looks like the company isn’t very responsive to their customers, but in actual fact, are taking the time to follow the complaints up in full and need approval before making a public reply. This is not a great process and I think it’s becoming evident that it can’t continue in this way for much longer. In a situation like this, there are three possible outcomes : internal systems and processes aren’t updated to take advantage of social media so customers are presumably left ‘hanging’ i.e. things stay the same because corporations are too regimented to change; internal processes are brought into the 21st century and companies are more able to take advantage of the 24 hour culture; or the third, most interesting option – your community intervenes.

The fascinating thing about social media is that communities will often help each other out. In lieu of an official response from a company, many people on Twitter, forums etc… will begin to answer each other questions, either solving a solution or confirming your complaint so you know you’re not an isolated case. This is one of the benefits you may gain as a company, if you spend time fostering a loyal community around your brand. I’ve seen this happen many times on Facebook pages and as this happens more and more, it is even cited as an example of ROI on social media. Why? Because you can lay off staff in your customer service department because people are out there doing the job for free. Not a particularly ethical example of ROI, but one that has been used on more than one occasion. You can of course, encourage this as a company, by introducing forums onto your site for example.

I’d recommend you have a look at this presentation to find out more about the ROI of social media customer service

Crowd-sourcing your customer services does help to troubleshoot an emerging issue around using social media as a customer service channel. Many companies choose to allocate social media channels to one person in the company. They build up a rapport with customers, know their history, are trusted in the community. But then they’re off sick, or worse, they leave the company. Suddenly you’re faced with the fact that a very large and very significant area of your business was trusted to one person and there’s no easy handover. They’ve gotten to know people personally through Twitter etc.. and all of a sudden they leave the company, leaving you with quite a mess on your hands and also having to make staff departures a very public thing. This supports the idea that social media should be adopted at a company-wide level and can’t be confined to one staff member whose job it is to ‘do’ social media.

The alignment of your social media strategy and customer service strategy should not be underestimated. Increasingly there is a call for the two to be connected, with more permeable organisational structures in place. It’s no use your community manager handling issues online, if someone they’re talking to then goes through to the ‘traditional’ customer service channels and has to start from scratch. This doesn’t provide the customer with a good experience, nor the company with an ROI-effective strategy. Again and again it comes back to the fact that the organisation has to change to reflect changing communication and behaviour by your customers.

Tags

• customer service
• forrester
• roi customer service
• roi social media
• skype
• Social Media