What once often resulted in 30 minutes of bad hold music, or 15 minutes spent in a line at your favorite store, has nearly become a thing of the past. Companies’ of all sizes are changing customer service efforts and the ways they help you.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had to be patient for anything. Convenience is king, and nowadays if we have an opinion on something, we don’t even have to be around anyone – we just announce it on Twitter, Facebook, or shoot a text message to our closest friend. When it comes to using social media to sound off about our latest encounter with a bad consumer experience, the biggest difference today is that they’re listening. “They”, of course, being the businesses you frequent. They’re on Facebook, they’re on Twitter, they monitor their Yelp reviews with great care… Customer satisfaction can make or break a business and, in this economy, it’s life or death!
A poll conducted in April of this year showed that 34% of people using social media utilize it to voice their opinion about different brands. The Harris poll also mentions, “within this group, a subset equal to 26% of the total said they complained about companies, brands or products, 23% said they spoke positively about them, and 19% gave product reviews or recommendations.”
…That’s a lot of people talking about brands! Considering 83.8% of respondents said they would trust user reviews over a critic, conversations and opinions shared through social media can heavily impact your brand’s reputation. Customer service had to change in order to accommodate the new way that people were communicating.
Cable & Internet Providing giant, Comcast, is at the forefront of this revolution. They have established @ComcastCares, a Twitter account run by Frank Eliason, the National Director of Customer Service Operations for Comcast.
By using search terms through Twitter, Eliason is able to locate people who are struggling with their service and help them immediately. Often, people are so frustrated with their service, in combination with the idea that they’ll have to sit on the phone, on hold, for several minutes waiting to explain their situation (maybe multiple times) to a customer service agent, that they’ll hold of fixing their service. This only perpetuates their frustration and lowers their opinion of the brand, as a result. By Comcast going to the problem (instead of waiting for the problem to come to them), they eliminate the chance for lowered reputation.
On the other side… Another mega-company, Hewlett-Packard, had an experience with customer service in the world of social media, and ended up learning the hard way. CrunchGear, a popular technology blog, received a story about a man whose laptop was sent in for repair, subsequently damaged by the technical crew, and who was then charged $1099 for the repair. With CrunchGear’s 34,000 daily visitors, Hewlett-Packard was in serious danger of permanently ruining their reputation… Not just with the general public, but with their target demographic of technology enthusiasts. HP ended up offering the man free repair service and apologizing for the ordeal – the power of social media in action.
Consider how your brand can utilize social media to improve your customer’s experience… Whether you seek out those who are having trouble, or find those who are endorsing your brand, just be sure you’re taking care of your customer base – particularly the portion that uses social media, as they are becoming more and more influential when it comes to your brand’s reputation.
Customer service is not just for big brands. If you have customers, then you know the importance of serving their needs. Through the use of a tool Like Social Mention, a free service to monitor your brand’s presence online, the job of customer service online is so much simpler. That means it is easy to stay in touch with what is being said a bout your company online whether it happens every day or every other week. This is important in today’s social media enabled business world because more is being said online about your brand by others than you! The need to stay on top of your brand’s evolving online conversations and the customer service opportunities that result is never greater than now.
