Customer service in the social web era
As is often said on social media courses, the first company to decide to invest in the development of a Twitter-based customer service system was Comcast, on the personal initiative of a Frank Eliason, who was launched to celebrity status as a result.
The story of Comcast, which was not alone in using Twitter to talk to customers, even if they were not so well known or did so in such a structured way, was detailed by Shel Israel in his book Twitterville. The company set up an account, @ComcastCares, which was run by different customer service operators who, in 2008, with Twitter just launched, began to invent the codes and tricks to offer customer service via such a minimalist tool. Issues such as using initials as a tweet signature, or the background to put the picture of the active operator were becoming common practice, as conversations about customers’ problems took place.
As Facebook grew, it too became a tool for customer service. After the acquisition of WhatsApp, the company realized that one of the few possibilities to make money out of a company whose founding mission was not to include advertisements or to distract its users with anything other than communication: “No ads, no games, no gimmicks” scribbled Brian Acton in a note for his co-founder, Jan Koum. And so it came up with the idea of using it as a customer service tool for companies, a reinterpretation of call center features but adapted to instant messaging, by which customers could contact companies, as outfits such as Line, Viber or WeChat in the Asian market, or Facebook itself with Facebook Messenger in the United States had already thought about doing.
This dual interpretation of customer service, divided between the use of social media tools such as Twitter or Facebook or instant messaging tools like WhatsApp and the like, raised the possibility of public use, in which the whole conversation or part of it developed under the gaze of followers of the affected user’s account, rather than a private one, similar to the traditional call center, in which the interaction took place privately, with the only difference being the existence of written evidence.
Users could use one channel or the other, while companies had to deal with their customers through the channels their customers chose. Since customer service tends to be about problems, most companies would probably have chosen the option of washing their dirty linen in private. Many users, on the other hand, given the opportunity of applying a greater level of pressure on these companies to resolve their problems, warn other users, tend to opt for public channels, which in certain cases, depending on the level of popularity of the affected or their followers, can trigger genuine reputation problems. Ignoring people with complaints or issues is almost always the worst option, and can create SEO nightmares.
Twitter, aware of its value proposition as a tool for customer service, has just unveiled an option that allows users to incorporate into direct messages the name and photograph of the person of the company they are talking to, in an attempt to make that interaction more human. Brands interested in adopting the feature it can request it through a form and once verified, obtain it quickly.
The idea is certainly intended to set companies apart from those that use chatbots or other conversational tools based on artificial intelligence, which are now widely used, thanks to improvements in natural language processing systems.
Chatbots in turn, have moved on and are no longer as clumsy as they used to be at redirecting queries: now, thanks to improved language recognition, they have far greater range and are popular with ever-widening segments of users — even younger people, who have come to prefer them because they do not involve bothering a real person.
All this, together with the need not to neglect any potential channels of communication, means that the different options currently available will end up being combined or offered together on a good number of occasions. If you thought that customer service was simply putting a phone number on your advertisement, think again …
(En español, aquí)
