Thanks for your feedback. I’d love to hear what reactions and observations you get from your customer service department.

Best,
CB

Thanks for sharing it… I am going to refer this post to my customer service department.

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

Lone Wolf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks!

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 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

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