After all, every business has a CRM system, a quality monitoring solution, hundreds of years of coaching and training knowledge, speech analytics tools, desktop monitoring and analytic tools, etc., all implemented with the common goal of improving customer service.
With the proliferation of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as smartphones which can transform a quick thought into a viral message before the thought is reconsidered, a lone customer service error can grow into a whole lot more.
Salesforce acquired a company called Radian6 with the purpose of integrating social media monitoring with your CRM dashboards.
If someone's mentioning your brand on Twitter, it's now automatically posted on a dashboard immediately. Forward-thinking companies will have a social response team patrolling these feeds, responding with honesty and integrity. If they don't, it will only make it worse.
Yesterday I had walked into a convenience store and showed them an item I had bought which had an expired date. I simply wanted to return it. They didn't even apologize for selling me the item, never mind offering me a new one.
My first reaction, the emotional outrage, was to break out my Droid Razr, snap a picture of the date on the item and then of the store logo and post it to Twitter. Why would anyone want to do business with this store?
Of course, after a few seconds, I thought about it. Maybe the cashier was having a rough day, and maybe this incident isn't representative of the entire store chain.
The Droid Razr went back into my pocket.
How often does the reconsideration not happen, and the blistering comment get posted?
Does your company have anyone who is actively monitoring social media for brand mentions?
Are they equipped to respond?
We're now enabling multi-channel monitoring in our call recording and quality monitoring suite, Virtual Observer, where you can record web chats, emails, social media response, etc., and bring those interactions into your evaluation and scoring process.
If you're going to be out there responding, optimize the way these situations are handled and include them in the quality initative.
Note: since this incident, a highly reputable, upscale store whom I don't frequent, happened to ship me a pair of totally used (thought we were purchasing new) rain boots for my 3 year old son. Crazy!
I tried to call and give them a chance to put their stellar reputation to work and they proceeded to make me transfer and re-tell my story three times. Frustrating.
I returned the boots to the local store, went home and ordered them on Zappos for the same price. Zappos shipped them to me next day, for free.
I ended up relaying the pleasurable Zappos customer experience to the store I had previously purchased the boots from, and the clerk actually told me "I know. Zappos is great. I can't believe we had actually shipped you the ones you returned to us (they were not only worn but discolored.)."
Related articles
- SalesForce Makes Listening And Engaging In The Social Web Easy (cloudave.com)
- Facebook and LinkedIn - The Modern Age Lead Generation Tools For Your Business (smedio.com)
- Audio Archive: Is Twitter the New Help Line? (socialmediatoday.com)
Nowadays only Customer services does not ensures a strong base. In this changing world reaching customers only through a call won't help you to maintain a happy customer base. Modern contact services like Email, IM and Texting are the best way to reach and make your customer happy!
ReplyDeletecall center services
That was a great way on explaining the what is customer service is about.Two thumbs up :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing these kind of information. I think it's very important to compare working in a shop with working in a callcenter. Already the possibilities you have in a callcenter( for example all this cloud-based-stuff) allows you to offer your customer more than a shopowner. Furthermore you could be gentle at phone, whilst making faces. A shopowner couldn't. That's why I think your analogy limps a bit.
ReplyDeleteCompanies who specialize in customer service may take social sharing as a challenge to improve their jobs in real time. It's because any customer's experiences - good or bad - can relay their message faster and easier through their status updates and tweets. And it's a make–or–break situation for someone who works in a service industry.
ReplyDeleteWell they will be losing their customers day by day, behavior matters a lot in selling anything moreover if something went wrong they should apologize n satisfy their customers that it will never happen again. Customer relationship plays key role in development of any type of business and if they deal their customers in an ill mannered way then definitely no one would like to visit them again.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more, Rick. Barely a week goes by without some big story of customer service gone bad (read: Decor My Eyes, or Paul Christoforo). Companies need to get with the times and realize that repercussions are right in the customer's pocket.
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