In previous posts I've examined how social media supports the product life cycle. I talked about how to create a beta community for product testing. Then I explained how to build social media buzz around your product. Most recently I blogged about how to build brand advocates in social media.
Social media blurs the lines between marketing and customer service. Product or service related conversations now happen on channels that were originally set up for marketing. And social media teams often have to respond to customers in a public space with a global audience.
Many companies are starting to make the leap into social customer service. The tipping point from listening to engagement is reaching a critical mass. But how to make the move less of a leap into the unknown? Firstly put in steps between monitoring and engagement and customer service. Give yourself a smoother transition.
Customer Satisfaction scores measure effectiveness
With this approach comes the need for a new type of measurement. Using likes, shares and sentiment as a metric is great for monitoring. But with customer service, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores become the priority key performance indicator (KPI). CSAT is often determined by one question in a follow-up survey. That old chestnut: "How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received?"
Top tips for customer service on social media
So how do you deliver great customer service on social media. Start with these pointers:
- Monitor conversations about your brand - obviously!
- Triage comments - prioritise and categorise
- Choose your tools wisely - here's how
- Integrate customer service into your social media - Service As A Service
- Create a winning team of all the talents - customer service, marketing, PR, legal
- Train and empower your team - the removal of authority is the handbrake to success
- Choose your channels as wisely as your tools - which platforms do you NEED to be on?
- Resource well and respond quickly - don't spread staff too thinly, it's a false economy
- Set community rules and be clear about policies - customers like transparency
- Group recurring questions or issues using logical themes - a huge time saver
- If you're in the wrong make it right - newsflash: frowns really can be turned upside down
- Some issues are best shifted to another channel - think privacy and compliance
- Be human, use some personalisation, even humour
- Measure - use CSAT scoring to keep on top of performance
Average Response Times
It's useful to benchmark for planning and performance. I use Unmetric's sector benchmarking for both response times and response types (see an example of these below). Typical customer expectations for response time on Twitter is within 30 minutes. For Facebook it's usually the same day. This is increasingly being written into service level agreements (SLAs).
According to NM Incite's 2012 Social Care Study 71% of customers recommend a brand that gives them a "quick and effective" response on social media. As I wrote in my last blog in this series, this is the golden fleece of social media for marketers. Brand advocacy.
Responding quickly is important. But, a quick response that doesn't resolve the issue is an incomplete response. And can make the issue worse. Remember to follow through after initial contact.
Be qualitative AND quantitative
It's important to consider metrics qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Batting angry customers away with a swift PR line is not customer service. There is nothing wrong with longer average response times if it means effective issue resolution. Remember, quick AND effective is the objective.
Equally, it is not appropriate to hold all conversations publicly. There may be questions of privacy or compliance requirements - particularly for the financial services industry. Unsurprisingly bank customers don't want to discuss their personal or business finances in front of an audience, and financial services institutions are restricted about what information they can share. I don't need to spell out the wisdom of keeping account numbers out of the public domain.
Last agent routing
When old channels fail, customers increasingly turn to social media. The urgency is higher on social media. When compared to voice as a channel, social media agents are often better trained, with greater autonomy to act. And increasingly they find you, not the other way around.
Luke Porter, Head of Social Customer Service at Sentiment Metrics, spoke to me about the impact of social on contact centres.
"At Sentiment our focus is on helping organisations deliver effective social customer service. Our goal is to help customer service teams manage the social channel in just the same way as they have been managing traditional channels, like voice, for many years. Just one example is the introduction of a 'last agent routing' feature, where our platform can identify a recent social interaction and ensure we route that customer to the same agent; thereby improving the customer experience."
Sunsetting your product
In a previous blog I looked at how products and services get incorporated into others or, sadly, fail. In the final blog of this series I'll be talking about how to close your product or service online. And how you can communicate this to your customers with minimum collateral damage.