Using Social Media to address your pain points.
This week’s social media blog posts:
Monday: Using Social Media to address your pain points.
Tuesday: Use Social Media to give your customers a seat at the table.
Wednesday: Picking a face for the organization.
Thursday: Picking a face, part 2.
Friday: Give away your expertise.
(This is the thirteenth in our series of Social Media posts for the month of October. We look forward to your feedback on this series.)
Studies show the biggest sources of customer dissatisfaction are unmet needs and expectations (59%), product/service usability and complexity complaints (43%), billing errors (40%), and lack of quality or relevancy of service/product offerings (32%). Often times, when a customer experiences some sort of hiccup with a product/service/customer service, or has a question that isn’t readily answered, she is a bit annoyed. Over time, that “annoyance” can grow to become the feeling that “it’s obvious the company just doesn’t care about me.”
Social Media gives you the opportunity to intervene during customer pain points to provide solutions or someone who will listen to customers or others who have questions.
With upwards of 70% of customers considering themselves “web first,” it goes to reason that the web (or at least cyberspace) is the first place they would hope to resolve customer service concerns. It’s a lot easier to log on to Facebook or Live Chat with a customer service rep than it is to dial an 800-number, get stuck in a phone tree and hope you eventually get someone on the line who can help you.
Comcast, JetBlue, Odwalla and Starbucks are some of the companies who are actively using social media for customer service. Comcast, for example, monitors Twitter, blogs and social sites to find messages from customers who have complaints about Comcast service, customer service issues, missed appointments, etc., and then they respond to them via Twitter in hopes of resolving as many issues as possible. Comcast’s Twitter customer service rep is a guy named Frank Eliasson, and his Twitter feed is called Comcast Cares. You can see some of his direct responses to customers here:
Just having Frank tweeting with customers in need has helped increase Comcast’s customer satisfaction index tremendously (every time Frank is able to help someone, he helps create a positive story for Comcast. And this story gets passed along). One of the qualities of Comcast Cares that makes it so effective is its real time component. When you are having issues hooking your DVR up, you want help right now. Not three hours or a day from now. Frank’s able to get back to most people within 10 minutes.
Listening to customers and followers is great. But key is understanding what you’re hearing. The content of responses will give you clues as to where your organization excels and where it falls short in the eyes of your customers. If 70% of complaints are based around price, consider pricing or tier alternatives (or ways you can add value or help customers realize more value). If they are around ease-of-use issues, consider producing a micro site with a live chat function that can help customers at critical phases.
Because Social Media allows such wonderful opportunities to hear what customers are saying, it can provide a powerful platform for resolving customer service issues in real time.
Posted by Mickey
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