Random thoughts on the impact of social media on customer service, complaints, companies

Hey people, let’s go easy on companies. We give them a pretty hard time. We’re rarely satisfied, always quick to react, often changing the goalposts depending on how we feel… and to top it all off, we expect them to be on Twitter 24/7, ready with a reply within seven minutes to my query or complaint.

And let’s not forget, my complaint is the most important one you’ve had today. I expect you to know who I am, I expect you to understand my predicament, I expect you to sympathise with me, to feel my pain. I know you’ve got rules and procedures, but perhaps just this once you could, you know, bend them a little for me? I’ve been a customer of yours for the last nine years, and I’ve recommended all my friends. Did I mention my cat is also really sick?

What’s that? There’s nothing you can do to help me? If you don’t help me, I’ll tweet to all my 57 friends, one of whom is Stephen Fry, who’s got hundreds of thousands of friends…

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No company will ever move as quickly as their customers would like.

Social media is an ongoing experiment, it is a mindset. Companies cannot change their mindset over night. Individuals can. People can. Customers can.

Companies will rarely live up to customers’ expectations.

Companies will always be aspirational, that’s why they have vision statements.

We applaud Zappos because they are the exception. We applaud Frank Eliason because he is the exception. It’s a mindset. It’s an individual.

Complaints are an opportunity to exceed expectations.

Companies think they know what’s best for their customers. Customers think they know how best to run a company. Pity they don’t talk to each other very often.

Social media is pushing everything outwards, decentralising processes and procedures. You can complain wherever you want, to whoever you want. Companies no longer own their own real estate, more and more outposts are emerging. Companies, simply can’t keep up. The paranoia of being where their customers are. The paranoia of being everywhere and nowhere.

The impact of social media is giving customer service a voice; a real voice. Is it the frontline? The new battleground? Is customer service the new customer experience?

The impact of social media is not about customer service becoming marketers, or marketers becoming customer service agents, because that approach still has appropriation at its core. It’s about customer service working with marketing, working with business operations, working with sales, working across silos…working collaboratively to create an authentic customer-centric experience.

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The best customer service is no customer service.

The myth of social media customer service

Don’t get me wrong I’m a huge advocate of social media customer service. I can see it’s value, I’ve experienced it first hand. I can see how a company can really enhance the way it engages with its customers if it’s willing to participate. But I’m also a realist. So here’s some of my thoughts about Twitter.

Twitter isn’t the answer. It’s a momentary fix that pacifies your customers at that moment in time. If you aren’t going to fix the root cause of the problem, your customers will keep coming back to shout at you, they’ll just use Twitter to do it. Customer service is a daily reminder of where you’re going wrong.

Twitter is great for identifying problems that may escalate and for picking up complaints. As Frank Eliason said, it’s a great ‘early warning’ system. But to resolve a problem, you’ll probably still need to transfer to email or a phone call. So don’t treat Twitter in isolation. Understand its strengths, but also understand its weaknesses.

If you’re looking for ROI in Twitter, make sure what it is you are really trying to measure. Twitter is great for identifying problems, it’s not necessarily the channel you will resolve the problem in. So, don’t try to apportion the entire measure to Twitter, only measure and judge it on what it does.

The avalanche of complaints won’t happen just because you’re on Twitter. People don’t suddenly switch one channel off and turn to another one. All they do is add that channel into the mix. It’s another option they’ve got.

Twitter is just a channel. Just like email or the phone. Understand it, understand what you want to do with it. Understand how your customers use it (or perhaps they don’t).

Customer service is an attitude, it’s an approach towards your customers. Twitter is just a means to express that. Zappos will be successful no matter what channel they use, because they are truly switched on in wanting to ‘wow’ their customers. ‘Wow’ for them is not about channel, it’s a mindset.

If using Twitter as a customer service channel doesn’t work for you, perhaps that’s more a comment about how you’re using Twitter. Remember Twitter is nothing more than a platform, a means to an end. Don’t blame the technology for shortcomings in your thinking or gaps in your processes.

Twitter is about people, people sharing ideas, observations, rants and raves, people helping people, people sharing the moment. If you can’t share, don’t.

Social media + language

I once lived in a world where a friend was someone I had got to know over a long period of time, might have even gone to school with them, would tell them my inner most thoughts perhaps, show them my vulnerabilities, get drunk with them, dance in a fountain with them, perhaps even sing karaoke with them.

I once lived in a world where a tweet was a sound a bird made.

I once lived in a world where a follower was someone who accepted the leadership of another (sorry, I’ve resorted to Google for that definition).

I once lived in a world where people knew my by my name – Guy Stephens.

I now live in a world where I get introduced as @guy1067, who has 1,801 followers, 2,579 tweets and a whole multitude of friends (99% of whom I’ve never met!).

And the thing is I’m still likely to share my innermost fears and vulnerabilities with these new found friends, whom I’ve never met and am unlikely to ever meet, without even raising an eyebrow.

Singing karaoke, however, may just be a step too far; even amongst friends!

Media140: social media customer service and the shouty man

I had the pleasure of speaking at the ‘mini’ Media140 last week. I was first up with Richard Baker (@richard_baker). Richard has recently left Virgin Trains, where he was their General Manager. We were followed by the ever erudite, ‘Hugh Grant-esque’ as someone mentioned on the night, Charlie Osmond (@cosmond, CEO FreshMinds). Richard and I spoke about some of the issues raised by the impact of social media on customer service.

Although Richard and I had exchanged numerous tweets and we were certainly ‘Twitter friends’, we had never met before. But what we had agreed on was wanting to create an open session, where people felt relaxed and comfortable enough to exchange their views, and we would simply either be part of the conversation that was taking place or facilitate it in whichever direction the audience wanted to take it.

We’ve all been at those conferences or seminars where it’s either the conversation over lunch or in the last five minutes of Q&A at the end of a session that is usually the most memorable. We wanted to do what we could to bring those ‘last five minutes’ to the beginning.

Furthermore, we also felt that for some reason when people tweet they seem to be much more genuine. They’re happy to rant and rave, speak their mind, speak openly and share, spark debate, disagree, provoke…and yet get them face to face and it all disappears. We wanted to try, in a sense, to get behind the facade of politeness and see real people being ‘real’.

Rather than start the evening off by introducing who we were and trying to establish our credentials, we simply started off by putting forward the observation that customer service and marketing as a result of Twitter/social media seemed to be moving closer together. That customer service was becoming the active voice of the brand.

We weren’t there to convince the audience of our view, nor to suggest we were experts in the matter. We simply tried to share our observation and experience on the subject, and encourage the audience to share theirs. Social media, at the end of the day so I’m told, is about sharing. We were fortunate that the audience picked up on this and did take part and shared and even better, disagreed at times.

I hope the format continues in subsequent events. Far better to hear and share the collective experiences, insights and thoughts of forty people, than just the one or two at the front. As @lesanto said with enough passion to fill the whole room: ‘We’re all explorers’. And so we were that night.

Thanks to @andegregson, @katepickering, @lesanto and @shutteritch for a great evening and here’s to the next one.

Social media customer service: It’s all about attitude

I was thinking a moment ago that we often mistake the use of social media within a customer service perspective, with the success or failure of that customer service experience.

How often have you heard someone say:

• That company has fantastic customer service. I tweeted my problem and it was picked up within minutes and sorted out soon after.
• That company has terrible customer service. I complained on Twitter and I haven’t heard anything back.

Actually, Twitter or social media is immaterial. It’s the attitude of the company that counts.

If a company values the customer above all else, then they are likely to provide a great customer experience no matter what. The flipside to this, is that if a company is not particularly customer-centric, then whether they use Twitter, email or the telephone, their customer service experience is likely to be less engaging.

At the end of the day, social media is just another communication channel. What brings it alive is the way a company chooses to use it. Focus on getting your attitude towards your customers right, and just use Twitter to express it.

The value of a signature

I am due for my car insurance to be renewed soon and I am currently being courted by The AA. I obviously filled out a form for an estimate with them last year, but ended up going with someone else in the end.

I received an initial email with a quote that was based on the information I provided last year. A few days after receiving that email I also received a speculative one about taking out home and content insurance with them. My initial surprise was now beginning to turn to mild annoyance. I haven’t agreed to one, before they immediately try to tempt me with something else. The flipside to this, is that I was quite impressed with the fact that they even remembered me; albeit in an automated kind of way.

Anyway, the main point of this post was that, in each case, the emails were all digitally signed by ‘Andrew Strong’, their Chief Executive. So what’s the problem? Not a problem, more a thought, well a small thought really.

If you are going to automate an email or a series of speculative emails (nothing wrong with that), wouldn’t it be more appropriate to match the type of email with the right level of person? Is the Chief Executive the right person to be signing speculative emails?

Speculative emails, by their very nature are, in a word, speculative. Hasn’t he got better things to be doing than sending emails to people who aren’t necessarily committed to using the services of his company? Far better, in my mind, should I choose to do so, that he sends me an email to thank me for taking out insurance with his company. At least then I have made a commitment and it would be great to get a ‘personal’ thank you from him.

At the end of the day, I also know that he has no real idea who I am anyway.

Don’t forget me Moo!

I recently bought some business cards from Moo.com and thought the whole experience was fantastic. I loved the small touches – the ‘yay’ sticker etc. I only did it because someone gave me a card which entitled me to a 15% discount with my first purchase.

When I got my cards, I also received three discount cards which I could pass on to my friends entitling them to 15% off their first purchase.

I then thought to myself for a moment that in some ways Moo was no different to other retailers out there. Often concentrating their efforts on getting new customers and not sparing a thought for existing ones who will run out of their cards at some point. Perhaps I’ve been premature and they’re saving the surprise for later.

It’s not that I always expect to get something for being a customer, but once in a while  the recognition would be nice.

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An interesting aside for me was also that I was really impressed with a service and experience that at no time involved any human contact with Mo0 itself!

Self-help networks

People are creating their own networks and ecosystems built on social platforms where the sharing of information between trusted ‘friends’ is paramount.

In this new paradigm, customers are helping each other, complaining on third party sites, or simply self-helping through their own research.

Customers are increasingly bypassing the need to engage with a company altogether. In a sense, customer service is moving outwards, it is decentralising into the hands of customers themselves. If you have a problem, who better to ask than someone who has recently had the same experience. Even more so, geography is no longer a boundary. The difference now is that we have the tools to ask the question.

I remember one instance at the beginning of the year when I went onto Tweetdeck and read a tweet from someone who was trying to find out how to take the SIM card out of their iPhone. I sent them a link to a YouTube video showing them how to do it. Unfortunately, the person didn’t have a paperclip, but what was interesting was that this person was on a train, and the train was in the States.

Take the example of making a complaint. This is no longer the exclusive domain of email, letters or the phone.

You can now complain in different ways via video, audio, blogs, in a forum – and on any number of sites over and above a company’s web site – Twitter, AudioBoo, Plebble, YouTube, Facebook.

The rise of third party complaint or feedback sites is further blurring the lines for a company. This blurring has the potential to make companies rethink how they will engage with not only customers, but people.

So, in this new highly fragmented space, companies are now having to proactively and publicly reach out to customers on their terms and in their spaces to find a renewed sense of their legitimacy to provide customer service.

4th Annual Online Customer Engagement Survey (2010)

I was chuffed to be asked by Richard Sedley of cScape to contribute to the 4th Annual Online Customer Engagement Survey (2010). In a brief speech introducing the report, Richard recommended companies follow three things, which are also mentioned in the introduction:

1) quality
2) simplicity
3) customer service

‘These are three key areas that can foster an understanding of value and emotional connection within the customer’ (p4).

The report covers a whole range of topics including mobile, social media, customer service, multichannel, customer engagement and measurement.

Do your own thing, don’t follow ‘best practice’

We’ve all bandied the words ‘best practice’ around at some point like some self-justifying mantra. The mere mention of these two words like some magic spell that immediately protects the success of the project that we are working on. But please don’t follow ‘best practice’.

At a time when social media is giving each of us the possibility to express our individuality, and the tools to voice our differences and opinions, best practice does its best to water everything down into a homogeneous mush of sameness. At a time when the only differentiator is the history of your relationship with your customers, best practice does its best to nullify that, that one brief moment of competitive advantage. Don’t waste it.

Be different, celebrate your difference. Be you.

Make your customer service different. Smile where others frown. See complaints as opportunities to engage, to converse, to pursue something mutually better. Remember each customer and their history, where others might simply treat that ‘moment of truth’ as a production line divided into three minute blocks.

Don’t be indifferent. Be memorable. And leave the best practice to others…

AudioBoo: Do your own thing, don’t follow ‘best practice’