Social customer care: Do #custserv surveys help build customer relationships

Every Tuesday night at 9pm EST (I’m suddenly not sure if it’s EST, but I do know it’s 2am in the UK when it happens), a #custserv chat takes place on Twitter. Having been part of a few of these chats, it’s a very lively one hour ‘deluge’ of tweets from a variety of pundits including @MarshaCollier, @BSDalton, @KnowledgeBishop, @EKolsky, @FrankEliason, @EYellin, @TedCoine amongst others.

As @JeffreyJKlingman tweeted last night: This Customer Service chat is on week 51. 66,400+ tweets on hashtag since mid-April. Participants from five continents.

Last night’s topic was: “Does requesting a survey after a #custserv incident improve the customer relationship?”

Reading through the highlights of the chat what really comes through is the idea that the use of surveys, whilst imperfect, is one of the few options companies have at the moment. And that if you do use them, make sure you are actually going to do something with the results you receive back from your customers. This can be summed up by Barry Dalton’s following tweet: Best advice I’ve been given on surveys-if you can’t act, don’t ask

Esteban Kolsky, in his usual insightful way, came up with the following observational tweet: – and the best part of it all? twitter, facebook, blogs, and the rest of SM were clearly made for feedback, why else have them?

There were lots of insightful tweets throughout, too numerous to mention. But if you are interested in customer service I would definitely encourage you to join the #custserv chat on Twitter if you have an hour to spare, or if you’re in the UK suffering from insomnia in the early hours of Tuesday morning.