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Social media help support enter the next level

Thomas Wieberneit, National Manager CRM Practice  :  27 October 2009 / 8:24 AM  :  1

Customers are increasingly voicing their troubles with products and companies in the web, using social media sites and communities to get answers to issues they have; sometimes they just launch a rant.

The good news for customers is that they regularly get solutions for their problems from within their enhanced social networks.

The good news for companies is that these sites and this behavioural pattern of their customers open up the opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and with that ultimately customer loyalty by offering innovative customer service. This happens by following the principle of being where the customers are instead of asking the customers to be where the company is.

But wait: There is a catch to it: Is there an answer to the question of why customers are seeking advice from their communities, if these communities are not company driven ones? Why aren’t customers addressing their problems to the “normal” support channels?

Well, while some customers habitually reach out into their network of trust, i.e. their communities, they normally are using company provided support channels. The issue is that customers often do not get the solutions they need from the corporate support channels.

There are many reasons for this, including but not limited to:

• Call centres may be overloaded: “Due to exceeding caller numbers we currently cannot answer your call. Your call is important to us, please stay in the line. The current estimated waiting time is 20 minutes”. One does not want to hear this message too often
• The service may be expensive and/or just not be qualified enough, or just overworked.
• The knowledge base that is available on the company web site probably does not give an answer either – or it does but the answer cannot be found.

These examples do not only give good reasons to reach out into communities. They may also give an explanation for rants. And we should not forget that with the global reach that customers now have a brand’s reputation can be seriously endangered. There are studies that say that a single negative voice reaches 9 additional people. On the positive side a positive voice reaches 5 persons as well.

As said before I have not given a complete list here but there is still enough to contemplate about and apparently part of the problem is a support infrastructure that is not set up to efficiently and effectively serve the customers’ needs and demands.

Participation in and/or running an own community is a lever to improve upon this, but it is not a silver bullet and needs to be done strategically. There for example is no point in rewarding those customers with great support service who “cry loudest”, who have the largest number of followers. It also does not right away solve the problems that a call centre has if customers regularly hear a message similar to the one above.

The social media strategy that winning companies will build in order to optimally embrace the new technologies will include the following aspects:

• A root cause analysis in order to identify the real problems that cause effects like the ones described above. These effects are symptoms and must not be confused with the problem itself. Some of them can probably be overcome without activities in social media.
• Clear and measurable goals and objectives.
• A revamp and adaptation of support processes – in the light of customer loyalty – in order to make sure that these important processes use social media effectively. These processes then also include guidance for company employees about when to actively involve oneself into social media activity as a company representative
• A set of meaningful KPIs to measure state and progress of the situation and the effectiveness of the support process
• Integration of the support strategy into the corporate loyalty management strategy and systems in order to be able to optimally leverage the knowledge of involved customers and to incentivise their helpful behaviours – without endangering their credibility
• Stepwise implementation and roll-out of the software tools that support the strategy and integrate the company systems with own and external communities. These tools may not yet be there but they can be expected very soon.

Some companies may decide to not embrace communities in their Support and CRM efforts. As a closing thought: For these companies it may be interesting to know that many successful companies are not successful because they are the best at what they do (and they very well may be) but because they offer best in class service amongst their competition and make this part of their mission and values.

Posted in CRM on 27 October 2009
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Tagged: Business Architecture   Business Intelligence  Business Modeling  Business Value  CRM  IT Strategy  Social Networking  Twitter  

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