Many start up organisations are now using social media channels as a way to develop their brand and initial customer base. It’s a really great concept due to the low set up costs as well as the ability to capture a large audience, locally, nationally and globally.
But, have you taken the time to consider the user experience of social media and the other challenges that it might bring?
One of the many expectations that social media delivers to customers is the ability to communicate and liaise with your business, when it’s convenient to them but, this might not be a time that is convenient to you. This is how social media has become the new customer service hotline – it’s convenient, easy and available 24/7 letting customers control when and how they deal with you. But what does this evolution mean for you?
The evolution of customer service
If we think about not so long ago, business customer service involved the need to phone a business, during business hours, and have a conversation with a real person. The business was right in the drivers seat – controlling the hours, the number of staff available to respond and also how the customer experience channel was managed.
Due to the cost of maintaining call centres and filling the seats with well trained customer service representatives, the 1990s saw a lot of large organisations outsourcing and off-shoring their customer service to make it a more cost effective alternative. This saved thousands and presented organisations with the ability to maintain higher profits, but before long some found that this was at the risk of customer satisfaction. It was around this time that the ‘world wide web’ evolution began and email was also becoming a common communication tool – and businesses were starting to create email accounts as an alternative to call centres. Email allowed for templated responses, creating a time effective way of responding to multiple types of queries, reducing costs even further and also, in some instances, reducing the level of experience required to respond to queries. This created a great benefit for customers and business, however, it also created the ability for customers to take more control of when they communicated with you rather than the control being in the businesses hand. Businesses were then being measured on the time it was taking to respond to emails, even if it was initiated outside of business hours.
And then enters social media. Now we’ve all watched the movie “The Social Network” and see how it began as a small university networking tool which has then (literally) taken over the world. Facebook started as a networking tool for individuals – inviting their friends to join them and, essentially, keep informed and up to speed on each others lives and interests, no matter where they are. Clever businesses were soon to identify that, with this many people gathering in one place, it was like all of their boxing day sales had come at once. Facebook pages for businesses were set up to promote their services, products and to reach their customers easily.
This all sounds great, nice and easy, and a win win for every one involved. But is it….really?
The two sides to social media
On one side of social media, the ability to reach an engaged audience through one small post is really un-comprehensible when considered against traditional media channels, but you need to be prepared to managed both sides of the coin.
Customers soon realised that, just as they do with their friends, they could comment on posts, ask questions and even send messages to businesses on Facebook, creating a whole new customer service channel. Some businesses were ready for this and had set up their page to monitor posts, but others weren’t and soon you started to see the new word of mouth evolution.
We always hear in business that customers are more likely to complain about a bad experience than a good one, and why not use a social tool like Facebook to ensure that all of your friends, their friends and their friends friends know about how bad it really was. Let’s admit, if you feel as though you’ve been treated incorrectly, the more people that you tell about it and get on your side, the better you feel (we’re all human). The risk of this type of exposure is very high and can become very costly – even compared to the cost of an inbound customer service call in the ’90s.
So the potential of a broadcasted negative experience is very high, but don’t let that scare you aware as you can use these expectations and channels to your advantage, you just need to be ready. There’s a few simple steps that will help you to assess if you are ready and potentially get started:
- Confirm your primary social channel: there are so many available to use but you need to focus your efforts on one that will drive the best results. Understand what present you want within social and then choose the best channel from there. You will be stretched very thin if you try to do all when you are just starting out so it’s best to dip your toe in before diving head first into the ocean.
- Set your parameters: you need to clearly understand how you are going to use social within your business, what your posts are going to about and what promotions are going to be delivered. Social should be included in your business and marketing strategy if you are serious about using it.
- Set your page up correctly: make sure all of your business details are clearly articulated on your page. If you only have certain business hours, these need to be reflected on your social page so that people don’t expect you to be available to them when you are not open.
- Be prepared for negative feedback: as good as you are at running your business and in your chosen specialisation, you are unfortunately going to have one negative experience that will creep into social media. You need to think about this as when not if so that you can be properly prepared. As in standard customer service, acknowledgement of the issue and the individuals feelings are paramount. You might think that they are creating Mount Everest, but everyone sets their own expectations and, if you haven’t met those, then you need to be prepared to understand why and how and enter a resolution process.
I’ve read numerous reports about businesses letting it rip on individuals who have left bad reviews and reacting emotionally only makes things worse. Ask the customer to send you alternative preferred contact details and discuss the problem with them directly. This will give you the ability to take back some control and move towards a resolution. - Make someone responsible for your social presence: make sure that you have someone who owns the main responsibility for managing your social media channels if it’s not you. Have this as part of their KPIs so that you can measure their performance against the customers experience. Also set up response criteria and even standard responses to general questions so that you can quickly react to a customer.
- Make it part of your daily business operations: if you are going to use social, bring it in as part of your daily routine. If you have someone responsible for managing the channel, don’t just leave it as a secondary task that is only looked at once a week. Keep a check on it daily, ensure the alerts are correctly set up so that you can see when comments are made and can respond quickly.
This certainly isn’t a do it yourself guide for social media, just a way to help you think about getting started and what it might mean. As with all customer experience channels, you need to maintain a level of compassion and professionalism in all interactions on social media. Everyone has a right to an opinion and social media has provided a great channel to allow everyone to express themselves however they like.
So, after reading this, you might decide that you aren’t ready for social and this isn’t actually a bad outcome. Unfortunately the exposure that social media has is definitely a two sided coin and you need to be completely prepared if you’re going to enter it.
If you’re not prepared, you might end up with more negative experiences that could become of greater impact than if you’d have chosen to invest a little bit more time in the first place.
Good Luck,
The Marketing Elf
August 2017
The Marketing Elf 