I’ve been running a LinkedIn group – where social media meets customer service – for the last four or five years, and someone recently posed the question:
What is your take on the fact that so many airlines offer social customer service during regular business hours only 9-5? Is it a matter of them not seeing the value in making it a fully operational channel, is it cost or just that the majority don’t get it?
The question got me thinking about social customer care and its relationship with what one might term traditional customer service. The bit I was particularly interested in was the reference to ‘regular business hours only 9-5′. The question I asked myself was this: Does social customer care really exist, or is it simply customer service with a social layer on top?
What do I mean by – social layer on top?
Do organisations design their social customer care proposition with the unique characteristics of social in mind or do they simply apply a traditional customer service approach to the social channels? For example, when I think about a resolution, do I think about how that resolution could be delivered via Twitter with the specific characteristics of Twitter in mind (ie. 140 characters in public) OR do I think about how that resolution could be delivered simply using Twitter as a delivery mechanism (ie. somehow reduce my existing customer service resolution to 140 characters OR Tweet the customer an email address OR point the customer to a web page etc).
In my mind we are still simply paying lip service to social customer care. The majority of companies are simply applying existing resolutions to social channels without any real thought about the characteristics of the social channel at hand. However, there are some exceptions that have emerged over the past few years: BestBuy’s #Twelpserve, O2′s #Tweetserve and Amazon’s MayDay.
