Call Center Management Featured Article
Call Center Management: Get Customer Service Right on Social in 2017
Most call centers today are starting to transition away from solely offering phone support to training their agents to respond to their customers via other communications channels. For most companies, that means getting to know social and what it’s all about.
Sites like Twitter, Facebook (News - Alert), LinkedIn and so many others have become a direct connection between customers, call center agents and brands. While there are many positive things as a result of this new way of communicating – it’s also a very dangerous game if you’re not getting it right each time.
What’s most critical to note is that these communications are usually happening in real-time and for everyone else to witness. Getting a complaint or handling a customer in an unfair way in these public forums can be detrimental to a company.
Now’s the time to think about what you’re doing as far as social media and training your agents as you revamp your practices for 2017 and focus on meeting goals.
A recent Business 2 Community article discusses some of the things you’ll want to be sure you’re doing to perfect the customer service you’re offering via social.
No one knows your audience and customers better than you. At this point you should understand their wants and needs well enough and know what social channels they are using most to reach out to you. For some companies this may be just one channel – for others it can include many. Either way, you’ll need to focus on making sure customer service reps are ready on those channels to respond quickly and consistently to customers.
There are even a number of social listening and monitoring tools on the market that help companies to be alerted about information on who is talking to them, why and when. This data can then be used to better understand how to get responses out quickly and how to further please customers – which is the ultimate end goal.
A big mistake companies make is thinking that social media is just another way to try and land sales. But while there may be opportunities to follow up and sell down the line, the focus needs to be solely on customer care and getting to know customers better— creating loyalty and relationships with them via social. That connection will go farther than any sales pitch ever will.
Are you doing social customer service right?
Edited by Alicia Young