Social media use by businesses is now more popular than ever, and it gets more widespread every day. As a customer, it offers a great way to contact a company, with your complaint in the public eye and therefore guaranteed to be a priority for the company. As a business, however, the benefits of canny social media use are even more pronounced.
Social media is instantaneous, and the conversation is in the public domain
Social media allows customers to type out a message to a company in a few seconds, then send it and go about their lives while the company speedily composes their reply. The company has a vested interest in dealing with the question quickly and efficiently, since every moment that a complaint sits unanswered on their Facebook wall or Twitter feed is more bad publicity – and a well-managed customer service interaction on social media can be an invaluable piece of marketing. Companies like Zappos and Littlewoods that exist purely online use these customer service interactions to fuel their reputations and generate word-of-mouth advertising that keeps customers coming back, time and again.
The public nature of social media does make this approach a double-edged sword, however. If the company handles the complaint badly, their failure is out in the open for the world to see, and will impact them negatively. While a risk for the company, it benefits the customer, as the company is more likely to go out of their way to ensure a good outcome to the complaint – far more so than when those same conversations are carried out in private over the phone or by email.
Customers are more likely to recommend the company afterwards
Customers are four times more likely to talk about their experiences with the business if they use social media, reports have shown. The reasoning for this is obvious – they are already on social media when they conclude their business with the company! They’re in the perfect position to quickly tell a huge number of people what happened, as opposed to people on the other end of a phone line or an email chain. Their share or retweet will reach many times more people than those that can be told by conventional means, with the possibility of reaching exponentially more if the post goes viral.
For this reason, a single well-handled customer service encounter can be worth more than any amount of marketing for a business.
It eliminates the funnel
The main reason why so many people love using social media for their customer service needs is only partly about speed and efficiency – it’s about the funnel. “The funnel” is the sorting process that companies use to box up customer service calls for processing – it is the robotic phone trees, the endless hold lines and the infinite transfers that plague any caller to a customer service department, as they are passed from department to department looking for one that can deal with their problem.
Social media eliminates this completely. When a customer tweets at a company, their complaint is always handled by a human being, and usually can be immediately addressed without the need to “transfer you to tech support”. The funnel is gone, and all that’s left is immediate, excellent customer service.
Win-win.
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1W67Qrg via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1GUfyZf
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