The Mini-Guide to Social Customer Service from Salesforce.com. Today, social media is turning customer service and support on its head. It is fundamentally changing how, where and to whom people look for help. And it presents both significant challenges and major opportunities for companies looking to succeed in business today. One thing is for sure, doing nothing is not an option. If we get this right, not only will customers continue to buy from us (and buy more and more often) they’ll become advocates for our brand.
More than this, we’ll achieve this while actually spending less on service & support. Get things wrong and customers have more ways than ever to tell everyone they know about it (as well as several thousand people they’ve never met). Sadly, today, too many businesses are getting it wrong. In this mini-guide, we’re going to give you an overview of this new business landscape. The guide is split into 6 key areas: 1. Almost every company is at a different stage of their social business journey. 2. Start by searching. 3. 4. 5. Imagine this… Turning Customer Service into Sales. It's a Social World. Are Your Service Agents Armed for Battle? Your customers are mobile, connected, and social. They interact with your brand and products in new and powerful ways.
They expect more from the companies and brands they spend money with. When they have a bad customer experience, switching to a competitor is easy, or even worse, sharing that experience with a broader social network is less than 140 characters away. Price point and location advantages have collapsed, and increasingly, companies are battling for the hearts and wallets of their customers in the area of customer service. The days of a single “customer service” department “owning” the company's relationship with customers are over. Empower your employees to listen, engage, and respond to customer problems through social media. Develop a strong, central CRM system that provides a single view across the customer lifecycle.
Ensure that not only your agents, but all of your employees, have the tools and leadership needed to unite them behind the needs of your customers. Social Customer Service Battleground. How a Single Moment Can Change the Customer Service Experience. When customers reaches out for support, what do they really expect? When encountering a particular situation repeatedly, the human mind is amazingly good at “scripting” portions of the behavior for use in the future. This process in apparent in physical activities (e.g., driving a standard transmission) as well as social interactions (e.g., introducing yourself to a stranger). So it's pretty simple — when reaching out to support people expect the experience to be bad. Very bad in most cases. You're currently reading a blog devoted to the idea of great customer support, but I assure you, if you weren't currently primed to think that support can be awesome, the mere idea of "support" would bring to mind the fury inspired by 20 minutes of smooth jazz hold music.
The study suggests that panhandlers who ask for unusual amounts of change (i.e, “37 cents” rather than “a quarter”) have a higher likelihood of receiving a contribution. It’s not an exact science; it’s an intuitive one. 1. Stanley Black and Decker Reveals Social Service Strategy. YouTube Video JoAnna Sohovich, Global President of Stanley Black & Decker, IAR division, talks about how the service cloud has helped the company save both time and money, while simultaneously increasing collaboration amongst employees and customers. Sohovich also reveals Stanley’s 3-pronged strategy to becoming a more social organization.
Social Media and Customer Service—Where to start? The Future of Social Media Monitoring. The Leading Social Media Monitoring Tool. Salesforce Service Cloud. Customers today want additional channels to interact with companies that they do business with. The traditional call center is rapidly changing and can no longer be the single source of service. However, the call center is not going away! The following is a summary of my findings on the effect of AHT (average handle time) when exposing additional channels for Service. I was recently at a company who supports their customers via inbound calls. When asked what other channels are available to their customers (self-service, knowledge, etc), I was informed that none of these are offered. We worked together to devise a road-map for how to bring their traditional contact center into the 21st century and create a next-generation service center.
Still, their sense of AHT as a measure of success was a hard one to overcome. AHT is the amount of time an agent talks to a customer + the amount of time of after call work the agent does for the call received. Let me walk you through it. Don’t worry. How Social Media Is Changing The Landscape Of Customer Service [INFOGRAPHIC] How to Lead Customer Service Conversations on Social Media. Quality customer service starts with careful listening. For brands that effectively service their customers through social media this means using the medium like a telephone, not a megaphone. Adopting the “telephone” strategy, there are two distinct ways that can guide your brand’s social media and customer service engagement strategy: respond to conversations that are already happening or initiate them. Read below for more details on how to execute each one of those steps:Step 1 - Respond: What to Say? There really is no universal, “right way” to engage and help your community.
The right type of engagement for your business stems from the goals you set forth for your social media program. There are, however, simple comments you can make right away that won’t compromise your brand’s reputation. The world of social media is overwhelming: billions of users; millions of conversations; countless service strategies to deploy. 5 Social Media Customer Service Lessons from Big Three Automakers. On a recent panel at the SOCAP (Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals) Annual Conference, the leaders of the customer care organizations at all three of the Detroit automakers (Ford, General Motors and Chrysler) sat together and talked openly and honestly about social customer service in their organizations. They discussed what they’ve learned and some of their challenges moving forward. Here some lessons learned in adding social media to your customer service function at large companies that serve a large consumer audience. 1.
Social Media Customer Service is not an Option Companies that serve large groups of customers need to respond using social media. 2. The same people who respond by phone and email are not necessarily the right people for social media customer care. 3. The volume of conversations on social media is huge and you can’t just rely on checking your Twitter @mentions and your Facebook Page. 4. 5. University establishes social media listening center. Published: February 23, 2012 Wall-mounted monitors display real-time social media data behind Clemson President James F. Barker; Allison Dew, executive director of social media for Dell; Jim Bottum, chief information officer and vice provost; and Ed Sullivan, vice president of strategic relationships for Radian6. image by: Clemson University CLEMSON, S.C. — Clemson University has built a Social Media Listening Center (SMLC), with support from Dell and Salesforce Radian6.
The center enables students to monitor thousands of online conversations about organizations, brands, products and services on a global scale in real time. This allows for more sophisticated review, routing and response to social media posts and content. “We are early, possibly the first, academic adopters of this technology and approach,” said Clemson Chief Information Officer Jim Bottum. Bottum learned about a social media listening center during a visit to Dell’s headquarters last year. The Game Mechanics of Customer Loyalty. Gabe Zichermann is the chair of Gamification Summit (June 19-21) and author of the books Game-Based Marketing, Gamification by Design and The Gamification Revolution (Q1 2013). Gabe is also the founder of Dopamine, a strategic consultancy specializing in engagement science. Most of the interest in gamification and user engagement for startups centers on customer acquisition.
This is partly because of the short time around startup planning, but also the strong need to show and grow traction as quickly as possible. With startups like Foursquare, Codecademy and StackOverflow using gamification to build unprecedented early customer engagement, it's no wonder so many founders want to talk about virality. SEE ALSO: How to Maximize Your Facebook Engagement By definition, loyalty is expressed when a consumer chooses your product/service when other options are mostly equal. Define the Grind Choose a clear and easy-to-understand action as the core of your product and loyalty effort. Gamification and Crowdsourcing Meet Customer Service. How American Airlines Uses Social CRM for Customer Engagement. Social Engagement blurs Service & Marketing...