Posted 31 weeks ago (October 11, 2011 at 10:00 AM) in Social Media
Digital Customer Service is expanding as interactive technologies continue to develop and our strategies for helping users through these channels must evolve, too! At Rise, we believe that making customers happy through social media requires access, expertise, and creativity.Here’s how to satisfy your guests and bring success to your business!
Use New Channels of Access to Find and be Found by your Customers
Contacting companies regarding their products or services used to be accomplished with just three avenues: in-person visits, phone calls, and mail. With the adoption of digital marketing, businesses began incorporating e-mail and live chat into their service strategies.
Today, social media has come to the forefront of customer service. Mobile devices allow customers to contact companies through social media channels from anywhere, at any time. These digital touch points are growing more diverse each day. How often have you heard about Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ this week?
When users seek companies out on these platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, they expect your company to have a presence. If you cannot be located, it’s an opportunity lost! If your business is there to approach, it’s an excellent opportunity to create an unforgettable brand experience for your users.
These new touch points bring new challenges for customer service providers. It is critical that your service strategy can manage each, provide knowledgeable service quickly, and give customers what they need pleasantly before they look to peers for answers and/or solace instead of your company!
Efficient Expertise
We’ve all experienced the prolonged headache of an inefficient call center, where getting the help you need can be like pulling out molars. Connective technologies have created digital communities where interested peers and “citizen experts” can offer information quickly, efficiently, and with an honest intent to help.
To stay on the front line, your customer service strategy has to be able to offer that and more! By opening lines of communication with your customers through social media, you stay relevant and available, visible and accessible.
It is important to have these channels open to address your customers quickly, whether it be to thank them for their kind words or to put out fires of discontent before they burn out of control and negatively impact your company’s brand. People talk whether you’re listening or not, so have an open ear and help keep their discussions informed.
Engage with people, genuinely make yourself available to aid them, and meet their needs without wasting their time. Your customers are more likely to be delighted by, stay loyal to, and advocate for your business.
Overcoming Volume of Responses
One of the challenges you may face is volume. If you receive a lot of requests, questions, and comments, we believe that the most important thing to do is to answer what you can and communicate that effort to them. People appreciate that you are trying to respond to each of them. One tip is to do a mass response; for example, on Twitter you can tag several people to say “Thanks!” in response to positive comments made about your company.
Another way to manage volume is to listen and track what users need. If you see questions that get asked repeatedly, we recommend doing something bigger to address them more efficiently, such as creating an FAQ. By sending customers to it, you can scale back on the time it takes to answer the questions individually. If 30 people ask the same 5 questions that are all addressed in the FAQ and a link to that commonly asked question is placed where the problem is usually experienced, you might cut down on questions. You could quickly and easily do a mass response like “Great questions! We talk about that in XYZ section of our FAQ. DM me if you're still running into trouble! link-to-XYZ-section-of-the-FAQ”
Most importantly, let people know that you are addressing their needs so that you can share and celebrate the solutions!
Creative Connections
With some creativity, you can meet and exceed customer needs and expectations through social media – doing wonders for your brand and even affecting your return on investment by winning over new clients through clever new ways of serving them. One of our favorite examples of a business exceeding expectations is what is currently being called “The Morton’s Phenomenon.”
A digital customer service genius at Morton’s Steakhouse saw a great digital PR opportunity with a high-profile customer that had over 110,000 followers and was active on Twitter. This customer posted a tweet about wishing for a Morton’s porterhouse steak after the two hour flight he was about to embark upon.
Morton’s took the opportunity to send a representative with a steak to the airport to greet that customer upon landing! He was so blown away by the act that he spread the word through Twitter and his blog to his enormous following about the experience.
How was Morton’s able to justify the expense for making this happen? Well, the same way that viral videos make it to every tech-savvy household in America, Morton’s harnessed the power of social and digital media to do their advertising for them. Through this one super smart act of creative customer service, they were able to shift all eyes their direction, earning real-world press and an increase in business that created a significant ROI. Perfection!
At Rise, we believe that each of our clients has the ability to change the world.
There is nothing that brings us more satisfaction than enabling you and your business to reach and even create new bars in digital customer service. We do this together by developing strategies that hear your customers’ growing voices and truly engage with them. Through the innovative use of social media, you can efficiently meet user needs and delight them, making a global impact and growing your business! How can we help you Rise?