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10 Social Customer Service Tips [Customer Relationship Management](Customer Relationship Management Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) New channel interactions don't have to be complicated By Leonard Kiie Through social media, virtually anyone, anywhere in the world, can be heard. Unfortunately for many businesses, an individual's comments might not always be complimentary. This is prompting more companies to turn to social media than ever before. Telephone and email still make up most customer service interactions-about 85 percent, according to ContactBabel's latest research, released in early December. Nonetheless, "despite very low levels of customer interactions via social media, the extremely high-profile nature of the channel and the possible magnifying effects of negative comments means that social media is viewed as being far more important than baseline interaction statistics would suggest," the firm said in its "Multichannel Inner Circle Guide" report. ContactBabel and many other research firms expect social media customer contacts to double by 2015. One firm, RnR Market Research, cites a rising focus on customer engagement and a recognition of the value of sharing ideas in real time as two of the forces that are driving growth in social customer care. The business advantages, it says, include increased transparency, better communication of ideas and information, flexibility, and performance. Donna Fluss, founder and president of DMG Consulting, contends that the time to start on social media-if you haven't already done so-is now, particularly as it becomes "a very comfortable way for a growing percentage of the population to communicate." This is especially true among consumers from Generation X and Generation Y. Social media is used as the primary customer service channel by 36.4 percent of Gen Y consumers, only slightly behind email and text messaging; among Gen X, it's the preferred channel for 20.7 percent, according to Dimension Data. It is becoming widely accepted, though, that social media's reach is expanding well beyond the younger generations. According to Pingdom, roughly 55 percent of Twitter users and 65 percent of Facebook users are over 35 years old. Given this fact, experts agree that social customer care deserves much more attention than it is receiving at most companies today. Most organizations, they say, have not yet developed adequate procedures and policies for dealing with customer service interactions initiated on social media. "It's being undervalued," says Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal at Beagle Research. ContactBabel, in its report, noted that "most companies are not fully geared up to providing customer service via social media with anywhere near the same quality as [they are] via telephony, or perhaps even email." Even worse, "organizations are still not making the investments [in social customer care] that they should be," Fluss laments. "Organizations are just now starting to build out multichannel contact centers, and they're not quite sure what to do with social media." To help organizations better manage social customer service, start with the following 10 tips: #1: CHOOSE THE RIGHT CHANNELS It's useful to note that social media is not limited to Twitter and Facebook. According to DMG's research, while 52.6 percent of companies use Facebook for customer service and 46.3 percent use Twitter, there are a number of other widely used channels as well, including Linkedln (28.4 percent), YouTube (23.2 percent), Google+ (14.7 percent), Tumblr (5.3 percent), and Pinterest (3.2 percent). But those percentages could change at any moment, which is why Fluss and others recommend deciding which social media channels to support by asking customers what they want to use. "It should be their decision, not yours," Fluss states. Additionally, customers are growing increasingly more sophisticated at seeking help themselves, with many preferring to look for solutions to their problems on their own before contacting a company. For that reason, companies should look to support customers with up-to-date knowledge bases that are readily available on their Web sites, and even consider putting product demos and tutorials on YouTube. #2: DEFINE YOUR COMPANY'S RULES OF ENGAGEMENT "Social media can never be done haphazardly," Fluss says. "It needs to be a coordinated effort." And that effort, most agree, should be handled by the contact center rather than the marketing department. According to DMG, marketers handle social media comments and feedback on a daily basis at 41.1 percent of companies. Corporate communications/public relations handles social media at 20 percent of firms, while customer service/contact center teams handle it at just 25.2 percent of firms. That's far too few, Fluss maintains. "The vast majority of questions on social media are customer service questions that the customer care organization needs to answer," she says. "Only the contact center knows how to respond best to customer service questions. A marketing person can't look at social media posts twice a day and expect to serve customers adequately." That's why Fluss and others have called for companies to form dedicated teams whose sole purpose is managing social media. "The ideal way to handle social media interactions is to build a social customer-care team using fully trained and knowledgeable customer service or contact center employees who know the company's servicing and operational policies and procedures and are comfortable interacting in social media channels," Fluss states. Then it's also essential that the entire social media response team follow the same basic business rules. The last thing a company wants to do, especially on a channel as public as social media, is offer a refund to one customer and not to another with the exact same issue. #3: LISTEN TO CUSTOMERS FIRST Social media is requiring organizations to listen to customers and prospects more than ever before, but with so much activity on social media sites, it's not easy for organizations to filter the relevant and important customer feedback from the noise and chatter. "Enterprises need listening devices and strategies to identify, capture, and respond to social media comments that do require a response," Fluss states. These tools, she adds, include text analytics and routing and queuing software. Additionally, Facebook and Twitter now offer search functionality, which when combined with hashtags and mentions, make it easier for companies to monitor and manage conversations about them. But that can be limiting, according to Ashley Verrill, a CRM analyst at Software Advice. "One common mistake I see organizations making is not listening for mentions of your brand that don't include your exact Twitter handle," she says. "Just because someone doesn't directly '@-message' you in a tweet doesn't mean you shouldn't respond. In fact, these [responses] often present opportunities to surprise and delight customers, which can mitigate negative backlash." Experts also suggest using social media to ask for feedback from customers. This might mean asking them how to improve a specific product or service or the business overall, or asking them what their pain points are. #4:RESPOND IN A TIMELY MANNER More than half of Twitter users expect a response within two hours of tweeting a company, according to a 2012 report from Oracle. And when social media inquiries remain unanswered, 55 percent of consumers will follow up with a call to the company, according to a Zendesk survey released in November 2013. "The protocols for social media are so much different than for other channels," advises Paul Greenberg, president of the 56 Group. "Assume that you have to respond much more quickly." Keep in mind that for every minute, hour, or day that a complaint goes unanswered, its impact may increase, he and others warn. Responding quickly, even when you don't have an answer right away, can make all the difference in the world, Verrill maintains. A "boilerplate response" such as "I am looking into this for you and will get back to you ASAP. Sorry for the delay," could be all that a company needs to calm an upset customer and buy it time to craft an adequate response, she states. Fluss says the response time should be standardized specifically to each social media channel. Posts to Twitter, for example, should minimally be answered within 30 minutes, but a response within 15 minutes is even better. For Facebook, a 24-hour response is minimally acceptable, but, ideally, a response should be logged in 25 minutes. For Linkedln, YouTube, Pinterest, and Yelp, responses should be posted in no more than 24 hours, though a same-calendar-day response is preferred. On Tumblr and Google+, the ideal response time is 60 minutes, and on Reddit, it's two hours. Verrill also mentions that customer service automation software can be used to alert agents if a ticket doesn't receive a response in a set amount of time. For social media, this time limit would ideally be two hours or less, she says. Fluss also suggests creating a time-sensitive escalation process for social media posts that are at risk of going viral. But Greenberg warns against assuming that all negative customer posts on social media could go viral. "You do not have to give things away just because someone tweeted something negative at you," he says. "Don't fall prey to blackmail like that." #5: DON'T FORGET CHIVALRY Receiving customer complaints never feels good. But instead of dreading them, companies can turn them into opportunities to showcase their customer service values. By acknowledging and apologizing for mistakes, companies can turn uncomfortable, potentially damaging situations into opportunities to show their followers that they truly care. They can generate positive sentiments simply by acknowledging customers, apologizing when appropriate, and offering thanks to customers who praise their brands. Even when customers present a challenge, it doesn't hurt to offer up the "Thanks for the opportunity to serve you" closing at the end of the interaction. Verrill says it helps to look at it this way: "A complaint handled properly is an opportunity to solve the same problem for other customers who may be following the conversation." #6: HAVE A PERSONALITY The repeating of automated, generic responses is easily spotted and can have a far worse effect than offering no response at all. Glossing over customer posts with generic statements such as "We're sorry to hear about your experience" will likely only escalate the situation. Conversely, personalized, unique interactions with customers on social media create stronger consumer/brand relationships. As such, let agents include their names or initials in their replies so customers know they are talking to real people. And while a friendly, positive, and cheery attitude can go a long way toward changing an angry customer's mood, it's important to always be professional and courteous, Pombriant advises. A little empathy goes much further than humor or too much levity. "Customers don't expect a company to be perfect all the time, but they do expect a modicum of empathy when dealing with their issues," Pombriant says. Because of the public nature of social media, it's also important to be honest and fully transparent at all times, he adds. #7: KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS When possible, companies should link their CRM systems to their social media engagement platforms to identify customers on social media and then gauge their level of involvement, social influence, revenue potential, and overall value as a customer. "If you're tracking customer product requests, it becomes vitally important to know if it's a $10 billion customer or a $1 million customer. Buying power has a lot to do with how you should respond," Pombriant says. "The customer's influence also plays a big role." Additionally, as they do with their other customer service channels, companies should track and record each customer's social interaction history to give agents insight into previous issues, sentiment level, interaction frequency, and previous agent replies. #8: STAY ON THE CUSTOMER'S PREFERRED CHANNEL Know that if a customer wanted to talk on the phone, she would have called the company in the first place. Unless she agrees to it or suggests a change in venue, don't force it. At the same time, though, it is important to be mindful of the customer's privacy. Because it's unreasonable to expect customers to relay personal information in a Facebook post or to post their credit card information to Twitter, companies should be prepared to move a conversation to a private and secure channel, such as the phone or Web chat, when needed to keep some information out of the public domain. #9: POST, DON'T JUST REPLY Companies can be proactive with their social customer service by posting useful information, such as product updates, tips to improve usability, and links to knowledge base articles, to keep followers engaged and in the know about the company and all it has to offer. Social media, Fluss argues, should be used "to build your brand and support your marketing initiatives, not just on a defensive basis." By keeping a Twitter feed or Facebook page updated, an organization can reduce inbound call traffic at a time when a particular issue might cause a spike in calls, as in a utility that experiences an outage, for example. #10: MAKE PERFORMANCE A PRIORITY Companies need to measure, report on, and take action on service level agreements, key performance indicators, and supervisory data to ensure that customer service remains at the center of their social customer care efforts. "There are lots of dynamics at play in social media," Fluss warns. "So you have to have service levels that are appropriate for the channel." Those metrics could also include revenue and sales lead generation, call deflection, Net Promoter Scores, or customer loyalty and retention, Pombriant notes. But in the end, the best way for a company to measure the effect of its social efforts is to look at overall customer sentiment. "Every company has its detractors. You want to minimize the number of yours," Pombriant states. While it all sounds very complicated, it's really not, most would agree, as long as companies treat social media as just another customer service channel. "Organizations don't need one strategy for the contact center, one for the Web, another for mobile, and one for social media," says Andrew McNair, Dimension Data's head of global benchmarking. "They need a single, unified strategy for customer contact across all channels, for all purposes." "Social media can never be done haphazardly. It needs to be a coordinated effort." "You clo not have to give things awag Just because someone tweeted something negative at you." "You have ta have service levels that are appropriate for the channel. " News Editor Leonard Klie can be reached at [email protected]. (c) 2014 Information Today, Inc. |