Let's take a step back in time to 2000, when customer support as we know it today was pretty different. For example, say you received your first cell phone bill, and it was $100 too high. You'd call the phone company's call center, and be put on hold for five minutes. Then you'd complain to the customer care representative, and if they didn't adjust your bill, you'd ask to speak to their supervisor. Hopefully, within a half hour, your bill would be fixed. This method of problem solving was expensive for the telephone company brand in two ways: the customer dissatisfaction caused churn (customers to come and go), and each phone call to the company took a good amount of time to resolve.
These days, our company is beginning to get phone calls from big-name call center brands because their own customers are beginning to ask them what they should do with the social customer. For example, a 1-800-employee call center brand contacted us wondering what they should sell their customers, to help monitor the social channels, because the customers are telling them that a lot of the comments and complaints that their brands are getting have "migrated down-channel" to the social Web. Hence, social service and support.
Social service and support allow brands to solve customers' problems a lot faster in a way that's more meaningful to customers and provides them the opportunity to solve one another's problems because they want to. You read that right. There are certain brands where the customers love the brand so damn much that they're willing to do customer service gratis. I'll give you an easy example.
Ever use Tide detergent? It's made by Procter & Gamble. They use a Social Customer Management tool to talk with their customers called GetSatisfaction. You can check it out at community.tide.com/tide. This social service and support community is there to serve four functions (Tide keeps it simple): customers can (1) ask a question, (2) share an idea, (3) report a problem, or (4) give praise. There's also a spot where customers can give Tide a tip. It's like the old "write to us" P.O. Box on the back of the detergent box, except incredibly more transparent. Who knows where those letters were going, right?
Now, there are some serious conversations going on in these forums, in full view of the public. For example, after the Haitian earthquake in January 2010, a user named Barbara was dissatisfied with Tide's response to the earthquake, so she asked why Tide wasn't doing more about it. Within a few hours, Mandy, a Tide employee, revealed that the Tide team was planning something to help the Haitian earthquake victims, and within a few days Tide clearly explained their plan to work collaboratively with their customers to raise $250,000 to $500,000 to send to Haiti.
Ed. note: This is part of a series of excerpts from The Social Customer, the new guide to social customer acquisition, monetization, and retention by Adam Metz. For the first entry, go here.