Do you truly listen to your customers?
Listening is an art…
Customer service in today’s social environment needs to be a way of thinking that includes the customer as part of the decision-making framework for business evolution. This cannot happen with the responsibility for customer service falling solely to one department; rather, this culture of customer involvement must permeate throughout the organization – from actual customer service channels through to marketing and stakeholder relations.
To date, corporations approach customer service in a reactive manner socially. Most community managers respond to customer questions and comments as they appear. While they may have resolved complaints on this level, most don’t do anything to track and analyze issues over time to help their businesses maintain and improve its value proposition to customers and establish new practices for “fixing the problems”.
Businesses need to formalize the process that enables them to deliver quality customer service through social media. This could potentially be categorized based on four streams of online engagement:
- Promoting products and services
- Establishing corporate and brand reputation
- Addressing key customer issues
- Communicating during crises and issues
When defining the online customer service strategy it must be aligned within the context of an existing Social Media Strategy (vision, practices and standards) and recognized best practices for online customer service – pioneered by companies like Dell and ComCast. These include: a consistent vision for, and application of, online customer service across all employees, departments and business lines, identifying the appropriate benchmarks and measurement standards, recognizing the role of the customer and the potential for every customer to be an influencer and the importance of demonstrating action – not just online but in how a business creates a positive customer service experience overall.
Brand Listeners will address some of the strategic consideration in implementing a customer service channel through social and how as a business you can establish a close loop process that will meet and exceed your customers needs. Stay tuned!
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Is your business considering social media as a way to reach out to customers that may have specific issue and who are voicing their opinion Facebook or Twitter. If you are let us know what steps you’re taking…
