Last month I was traveling from Budapest to Montreal, and forget to book a wheelchair in advance. I skipped the phone and just tweeted to AIR Canada.
As expected, problem solved. They were responsive.
Similarly, I had a problem with NordVPN some time ago. Tweeted to company and they fixed it within minutes.
Anna Yates from The Social Reach says – “
“Social media is the future of customer service”
Despite this many companies are either left out or not giving proper attention it needs.
Look at some of these states:
Only 36% of the consumer that makes customer service inquiries via social media, report having their issue solved quickly and effectively.
There is 20-40% more engagement with customers if the company respond over social media.
The number for referral on positive response is pretty huge at 71%.
Well, that’s pretty convincing but let’s not jump to the conclusion.
There is a greater risk of 83% of the bailout on the purchase if you fail the customer on social media.
Leo Widrich from Buffer talks about customer happiness, he puts in:
“Customer support is the very rare opportunity to connect to your customers on an emotional level. You can’t do that in any other way.”
Now the question is what your customer wants?
A quick, honest and easy service delivery is what they are looking for
From one of Edison’s studies, 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within an hour, and 32% think it should be within 30 minutes.
Moreover, speed wins over how effective the response is. More customers are likely to recommend a brand which is quick but ineffective than to a slow but effective brand. Now, this doesn’t mean you should rush to give useless responses. It’s just how speed is everything.
70% of the buying experience is based on how a person thinks they are being treated. They need to feel that they are not the insignificant speck in a sea of social media.
“I hear you” or “I am sorry” can be transformational if you don’t know the answer. It will build the relationship. Just keep in touch until you do resolve their request.
Similarly, the platform also matters the most. If the customer is on Facebook, they want their reply their itself, not on Twitter. They don’t want to call 811 to resolve a query posted on Facebook.
Till recently Facebook was at the top when it comes to customer engagement, but its Twitter these days.
So What’s your strategy for Customer social media service?
By now you know where your customers are. Let’s know how to wow them.
Red Oxx, a small luggage manufacturer in Billings, Mont Jenna, uses Helpscout, a helpdesk software system that integrates into its social channels and allow them to do social media monitoring, answer incoming messages from its site. Also, Smooch allows them to connect business software to all messaging channels., to link the facebook messages to Helpscout.
Monitoring your brand is the very first step. Knowing everything that’s being said about you online and responding when needed increases your visibility by 70%. For all this stuff you will need monitoring tools, including Google Alert, Mention, Social Mention, etc.
Knowing when to step-in is as important as a quick reply. 51% want to talk about companies in social media without them listening. 43% think listening in social media intrudes on privacy.
So not every mention is an invitation to enter.
What if you went wrong somewhere? This is where the damage control comes in.
Tony Stevenson, social media support at Purple Olive Labs, a Dallas based app development company, says companies often forget that social media allows them to defend themselves and show what you have done right.
“Show off a bit” suggest Tony. Share the reviews and experiences of your product by resharing candid posts on social media. This would include photos or videos of appreciation. When others see this, it would create more great opportunities for your brand.
After doing all this requires measuring what you achieved.
Measuring success
Consider three matrices for measuring success: Volume, Resolution rate, Time to resolve.
The volume of the message tells you how many customer requests you received, issues you resolved and problems you are responding every period?
Buffer sent 9771 emails and 5700 tweets and had 265 live chats. That’s is huge!!
This tells a couple of things like how big the workload is and how many resources you would require for that.
Measure the resolution rate. It will tell you how many total issues your customer had and how many you resolved per resolving period.
Speed of resolution we have already discussed earlier. Measure the average time it takes to answer a question or resolve a problem.
