Today’s post comes courtesy of Gareth Murran, ThirdForceTechnology Innovation Executive
A couple a weeks ago, I attended the UK’s leading event on everything web Internet World (#iwexpo) which took place over three days at Earls Court; London. Right now every industry from e-learning to aerospace seems set on a collision course with social software. Many companies are asking themselves if they have what it takes to compete in the social media marketplace. Who, after all, has the time or the budget to mimic Disney or Starbucks? Certainly not a small or medium sized business!
Like it or not customers are talking about you online, are you there to listen and respond? If not, this is a wasted opportunity and one that could cost you in the future. Twitter hasn’t replaced the telephone for customer support yet, but the list of companies using it as a customer support channel is growing.
It struck me listening to the conversations at the show that customer service is a good place to start in social media. Customers and your employees have more power than ever before. Mobile, social, video, and cloud technologies give individuals tremendous access to information and resources. Forrester talks about this as an “empowering” the customer and companies are scrambling to find ways to keep these customers satisfied.
To succeed in this era of empowered customers, each employee should be encouraged to think about and solve customer and business problems. No company is nimble enough to serve or deliver 100% customer satisfaction using traditional channels. With established processes and departmental boundaries, things move too slowly. Every employee can help to solve customer problems.
Taking a view that customer service is a form of marketing means a change in approach for both disciplines and requires effective collaboration between both departments. Don’t throw away customer service tools and systems, or tear up marketing plans. The key to turning customer service into a marketing channel is to be efficient in assisting employees to solve customer problems, drawing in expertise from every department. This is much harder than it sounds. It means driven staff needs to be coming up with solutions using their own initiative. Management’s new job is to support motivated and talented employees. IT’s new job is to support and encourage employees.
This may sound like a complete inversion of the top-down way companies operate, but customer service that features outreach through social channels can energise word of mouth from those happier customers. Companies need to learn how to leverage social media to build their brand images. It’s important not to over interpret “influence” from individuals, put this aside, all customers’ count (not to mention the fact that influencers are overrated). A company’s job is to keep its all customers happy. Responding to complaints on Twitter and other social media can be a great way to do that.
Why not kick start social media efforts in an area that will show some real ROI like customer service? Your first action is to create a set of social media policies and guidelines, provide your business a framework to carry out your social media strategy and tactics. Then you will need to report on your progress. A tip I picked up from Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter research group is to avoid information overload of executives and management, Owyang offers up a valuable solution, provide the right metrics to the right audience. Know who your internal audience is and give them the appropriate information.
