My eye caught a couple of interesting tweets the other day at lunchtime. They were snippets of a Twitter chat that was streaming across my screen. In or out of the context of the chat dialogue that was running in the background, these two tweets raise some interesting questions about the importance of investing in a Social Customer Service strategy.
First tweet: “The “right” social channel depends on where your customers hang out. You party where the party is happening” and then second tweet: “…it makes little sense to be on Twitter if your customers don’t use it despite its popularity”.
Putting on my Customer Experience hat (because that’s my current lens), when we think of the various touchpoints where customers interact with a company to resolve service issues, Customer Care, the Call Centre, the IVR channel, the corporate website often come up in Journey Mapping exercises. However, we’re starting to see Social Media, and in particular, Social Customer Service, coming up as a touchpoint that people want to delve into in more depth in the mapping process.
Whether brands like it or not, customers are forcing their hands to use Social Media to communicate with them. Because customers can now control the message, they have the power to generate their own negative groundswell about a brand. Now whether this will impact a brand’s success depends on the brand strategy; i.e., consider the fake RyanAir Facebook page created by angry RyanAir customers. RyanAir has made a conscious choice, as a deep discount airline, not to engage with its customers on Social Media. Will the fake account impact sales? Probably not. But if a fake Twitter or Facebook account were set up to spoof a more mainstream or premium brand and was used to create negative buzz, or if an avalanche of negative comments went viral in Social Media, it could have some reputational damage for the brand.
Because customers can now control the message, they have the power to generate their own negative groundswell about a brand.
What I’ve discovered from working with clients at major brands across the country, speaking with colleagues, and just my own observations, is that companies are at different stages in the Social Customer Service life cycle. And don’t kid yourself, these are early days for most. Companies are still experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. While some companies have a strategy around how they’re rolling out Social Customer Care, others have just jumped into it in a “trial by fire” sort of way. Some are at a very early, very cautious stage with PR doing the listening; others have been at it for a couple of years and have a team of Customer Service agents engaging with customers. For many, Marketing is handling all the Social inquiries. Some companies are listening and engaging 9 to 5, on week-days only; others, 24 x 7 and across the globe.
Rogers and TD Bank have multiple agents manning their Twitter accounts and engaging with customers about service issues. Flight Centre has multiple geographic accounts with multiple agents, so that it’s handling service issues 24×7. Canada Post is into the third phase of its recently launched Social Customer Service strategy (they just went live July 3rd) and is priming for high volume engagement over the Christmas season, according to Brian Beehler, their Director of Social Media. Interestingly, retailers in fashion especially, are quite diverse in how they engage. A quick scan of their Twitter accounts, while still marketing-heavy, show clear distinctions from zero engagement and one way push, to ongoing conversations and great engagement. One might intuitively think that fashion retailers would be pretty aligned in their Social strategies. Yet just look at the low to high engagement continuum between The Bay, Holt Renfrew, Club Monaco and Aldo Shoes, respectively as you scan the activity in their Twitter profiles. Can you see how they differ?
Aldo does a great job with its Twitter profile
Others, like Town Shoes, doesn’t seem sure how they’re going to engage yet. So there’s a real mish-mash out there. Seems pretty random to me, but perhaps just a function of where the company is on the Social Media adoption curve.
In order to help build the business case for Social Customer Service and put it on the priority list, an important question companies should be asking is whether providing Customer Service via Social Media is a “Moment of Truth” (MoT) or not? In other words, will the interaction between customer and company at the Social touchpoint, be an event that helps define the customer’s opinion of the brand? Do we have an opportunity to leave our customer or prospect with a lasting memory of a great experience that they’ll want to share with their friends and colleagues?
In order to help build the business case for Social Customer Service…an important question companies should be asking is whether providing Customer Service via Social Media is a “Moment of Truth” or not?
At the company I work for, we have a methodology for defining “Moments of Truth” quantitatively. We define a “Moment of Truth” as a large gap (on a 100 point scale that’s relative to the size of the other gaps – usually over 30 points) between what the customer says is important to them and how satisfied they are with the touchpoint. [Note the red box around the Social Customer Service touchpoint, in the image below. The MoT gap is 36 points.] This “Moment of Truth” is determined by presenting our customers with a series of quantitative questions where they’re asked to rate the importance and satisfaction of various attributes about each touchpoint). So if customers are telling us that Social Customer Service is important to them, and they are highly dissatisfied with their experience at this touchpoint, this would suggest we have an opportunity to invest in and/or improve Social Customer Service and create lasting memories for them. We would prioritize this as a touchpoint we want to invest in. And by invest, I mean, not only to improve the experience through better tools, training of Social Agents, and interactions, but also to create an innovative approach that would differentiate us in the marketplace.
“Moments of Truth” help us focus in on what’s most important for our customers
Why are businesses investing in Customer Experience strategy in the first place? It’s to help differentiate themselves in a commoditized world. It’s to help them create lasting memories at specific touchpoints so that their customers want to share with their friends, family, and colleagues how they felt about banking at the newly-designed branches, experiencing the cool vibe at the restaurants, speaking to an empathetic, upbeat customer service rep on the phone about returning a product, getting a tweet about a delayed flight responded to positively within 3 minutes, etc. The emotional rush that we get from an exceptional experience and the desire to share the story with people we know, is the essence of the Net Promoter Score a metric used by many leading organizations, it’s at the heart of Word of Mouth marketing, and it’s shown to have direct links to increased loyalty and increased profitability.
Why are businesses investing in Customer Experience strategy in the first place? It’s to help differentiate themselves in a commoditized world.
Let’s not forget that organizations have limited budgets. Social Customer Service is but a single touchpoint where our clients (depending on the business we’re in) can engage directly with us. Social Customer Service may well be worth pursuing; however, if we can’t build the business case for it, will our executives give us the funding to invest in the staff, training, and tools to make it a success? You may be able to show how an investment in Social Customer Care can offset some of your Call Centre costs (if you have a Call Centre); you may be able to sell it to the executive committee using fear as a tactic; i.e., if you ignore service requests on Social, it may lead to a PR nightmare. At the end of the day though, as organizations become more customer-centric in order to differentiate from their competitors, unless their customers are telling them that this is really important and the company is doing a lousy job at it, it’s probably going to be low on the priority scale for executive investment.
What do you think? Do you think an investment in Social Customer Service is important for your own company? How important do you think it is for your customers?
