What’s your opinion on reinventing customer service? How about making it more social? I see a major customer service conflict taking place between traditional and social customer service. And if we don’t get social, the conflict will only get more intense.
Perhaps you’ve seen signs of it: David Carroll serenading us with United Breaks Guitars. Jeff Jarvis creating Hell for Dell. A Comcast customer posting Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch. John Winsor’s blogpost asking Is Your Customer Service Ready for the New World of Openness? about Boeing’s legalese form letter to a child passionate enough about airplanes to mail in a drawing …
All this happened because traditional customer service channels aren’t equipped to deal with social feedback, prepared to respond and interact with people as individuals worthy of consideration and respect, or able to consider that complainers might be voicing legitimate concerns.
The traditional approach tolerates customer service as a necessary evil, a cost center to be minimized, perhaps even marginalized. Forget social: It’s too emotional. Emotion opens an organization up to financial exposure and distracts from prudent focus on statistically significant trends.
Now, don’t get me wrong. When you’re running a business, particularly on thin margins, the last thing you can afford to do is to write blank checks to everyone. That’s not what I’m proposing with a social approach to customer service.
However, the tough traditional stance invites customers with valid complaints to seek out alternative solutions for being heard—increasingly in ways that can be heard not just within an intimate circle, but around the world. Statistically insignificant is no longer relevant when customers can be as vocal as a head of state, thanks to the democratization of storytelling options.
Meaning that it behooves every organization to learn about humility and respect for customers and to inject that spirit into every silo. All organizations exist, not in a avoid, but in a marketplace. Business transactions take place between individuals––not brands or companies—as a result of conversation based on careful listening, respect and trust. It’s our humanity that leads to loyalty, brand fervor and word-of-mouth endorsements.
That’s making customer service more social.
The companies I refer to above have for the most part adopted a more social approach to customer service. A viral and public outcry forced them to reevaluate processes and interactions with customers, critics, advocates and supporters, and hire full-time customer advocates trained and empowered to listen, respond, and resolve issues (e.g, Frank Eliason @ComcastCares). They have worked to welcome social feedback into their processes and are better for it, having discovered that customer feedback paves the way to invaluable business insights, worth far more than the original customer service costs.
Making customer service more social requires a radical rethinking of cost centers and hiring practices. Many traditional customer service departments are the domain of least-appreciated employees whose perspectives are rarely integrated into the overall business; they are expected to adhere to rigid scripts.
The crazy thing about rigidity, particularly corporate rigidity, is that it generates a David and Goliath reaction. As customers, we feel wronged. We want to escalate the complaint, find a backdoor and express our frustration. We want to be acknowledged and listened to. We want to deal with people and not the system.
Be social in your customer service dealings. Defuse the frustration. Find resolution.
Look at how Zappos has differentiated themselves via their commitment to customer service, or rather customer care. It is available 24/7, live via the phone as well as through social channels, such as Twitter. You may even interact directly with CEO Tony Hsieh. That’s making customer service social. Zappos has succeeded by being very social with talented, trained, passionate employees.
Boeing has graciously issued a social mea culpa, acknowledging mistakes. I’m hopeful they will embrace openness and newfound humanity in their interactions with customers.
Staples considers interaction with customers an opportunity for insights as well as delight, training customer-care representatives to interact on social channels while preserving the ‘voice’ and maintaining consistency.
Humility, respect for customers, a willingness to appreciate individuals within corporate walls as well as outside, a desire to improve and truly delight, proper training, openness to a variety of perspectives, a willingness to empower and be human and a strong desire to listen. All characteristics of a social customer-service company.
What would you add?
Tags: customer service, Marketing, Social Media
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Christine,
Great post. I am currently attending ICMI’s ACCE (Call Center & Customer Experience) conference in NOLA. It is almost shocking to me how many service leaders are scared (make that petrified) of social support. It is going to take a while, but folks are slowly coming around.
Mike
@mpace101
Mike,
I bet you are gathering fascinating insights from the ICMI ACCE conference! It’s strange how frightening social is to business people. And, yet, it is the basis for relationship building which is what makes business possible.
Many thanks for your comment and I look forward to hearing more!
Best,
Christine
Hi Christine,
Social media is exposing many companies’ dark secrets about what they really think about customers. Companies can no longer afford to just focus on how quickly customer care calls can be cleared but also must be concerned about the customer experience.
Customer service won’t be more social until there is a commitment to being truly customer centric. This must not come at the expense of destroying margins. Customer service processes and systems must be reviewed to ensure the customer experience is not only what companies think they should be delivering but also what customers want.
This requires commitment from the top down and performance metrics that accurately and fairly shed light on the reality of customer experience.
I’ll be writing more about this topic at my website.
Thanks for the good work.
Harry Klein
Customer Engagement Strategies, Inc.
I truly believe that until customer service reps have the power to ‘make it right’, then no amount of ‘being social’ will give customers a great CS experience. How many times have we reached someone in CS who tells us “I’m sorry, I don’t have authorization to do that.” (and I don’t mean something huge, just a simple action that would speak worlds about how much that company cares about retaining its customers).
Thanks!
Harry,
You are absolutely right! There has to be commitment to being truly customer centric from the top down, otherwise it won’t become social.
Don’t you think that the lack of transparency, hand-in-hand with inconsistency, is what leads to so much conflict in customer service now? Dark secrets lead to lack of trust; not respecting customers leads to dispatching them quickly without trying to truly come to optimal resolution.
I’m delighted that you’ll be writing more about this topic.
Thanks for adding to this conversation.
Best,
CB
Derek,
I’m amazed at how important it is to have commitment from on high to truly focus on customers and encourage/empower CS reps to resolve issues. Take Zappos. Totally focused on customers and the CEO will answer customer calls himself. That says a lot!
Without it, any attempt at social would ring hollow because it wouldn’t be sustainable. No?
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Best,
CB
Christine,
Thanks for a great post.
I see social media as a huge opportunity for market research, done by the customer rather than the company. Instead of the company working out what questions they want to have answered, they need to find ways of efficiently using the feedback they get to improve their offerings. What new systems should be invented, and how could it be used to:
- Provide better segmentation
- Make incremental changes to products and services
- Work out what new markets to enter
- Improve collateral
- Provide better Q&A
- And any other general marketing questions?
Penny
Christine,
Social customer servicing is among the fast growing parts of our business here at Visible Tech. On a day-to-day basis, customer care agents are starting to deal with in online communities a wide variety of very mundane and “below the headlines” types of issues they deal with in other channels, such as email and phone. It is going to be a much larger part of the social universe as we move forward. The key to more brands moving in this direction is tied to the maturity of required metrics that justify the investments and underscore the real brand value. This is also coming. It’s an interesting and fun area to work on these days.
Mike Spataro
Client Strategy
Visible Technologies
Penny,
I love that you are taking a market research approach to customer service! Ideally, there should be a feedback loop whereby a company can validate with its customers whether it is providing the right information and answering the correct questions. We’ re starting to see examples of that [e.g., Dell Ideastorm, My Starbucks Idea, Fiskars obtaining product feedback via their Fiskateers...]. I’m hoping this is just the beginning as it starts a rich process.
Thanks very much for adding your perspective.
Best,
Christine
Mike,
Thanks for putting social customer service into perspective. How exciting that Visible Technologies is getting immersed in providing more value as a result.
I’d love to hear more about how you see metrics helping justify investments. What have you found most beneficial? How have you gotten buy-in? Have you had to do additional training?
Thanks for adding to this conversation.
Best,
CB
Well said Harry.At one side the social media is helpful for growing the business and relationships with the customers and professional but on the other side its risky to share the private information of business on social networks.
electronic business cards, that’s where social media guidelines and policy fit in for engaging online via social networks. They state the rules of engagement for both parties thereby setting expectations.
As intimidating as social seems, the benefits are huge. We just need Mike to tell us more about metrics!
Thanks for your comment.
Best,
CB
Christine, I agree with Derek. CSR empowerment is crucial. How many times do consumers get frustrated explaining an issue to a rep only to repeat it again for a supervisor? I had a recent experience with Cox Communications Arizona in which the rep was weak and not 100% forthright and I eventually spoke with someone in Customer Retention. That’s where the service was impeccable. Too bad companies aren’t always offering that type of service at the first touchpoint.
Elaine, isn’t it aggravating having to repeat your story all over again? You’d think there would be a better process. I remember the first time I learned about the escalation process for customer service resolution used in electronics; not sure if elsewhere, too. When you hit a brick wall with the current CSR, you ask to be referred to a manager and so on until you obtain resolution. The lower level CSRs cannot/aren’t allowed to resolve the issue. It’s an intense process, filled with inefficiency. The higher you go, the more competent/trained and satisfying the interaction. Triage – so to speak – of customer service issues.
As you say, too bad companies aren’t offering that type service at the first touchpoint!
Many thanks for sharing your example and adding to this discussion.
Best,
CB
Great article Christine! I think that more and more businesses are starting to see this as the only option moving forward. This is now a race against technology for large corporations and a time that may pass some by. Good insight and great writing, thank you so much.
Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf,
I sure hope that more and more businesses realize it is the only option moving forward. As Elaine’s comment highlights, the inefficiency in not adopting a social attitude is preposterous and the potential for massive, messy black eyes considerable!
Thanks very much for your comments.
Best,
CB
Since we are going through a digital age so there are too many social channels to interact with customers such as twitter, facebook etc but I think one must be there to listen to their problems and fix the issues. Sometimes customers are really annoyed and vent out so rather than overlooking their outcry one should respect them and always put them on first priority.
Thanks for sharing it… I am going to refer this post to my customer service department.
Sara, you bring up an important point about all of the social channels: too many to interact on. However, the listening is invaluable and allows us to identify in an unprecedented way issues and fix them.
Thanks for your feedback. I’d love to hear what reactions and observations you get from your customer service department.
Best,
CB