acebook & customer service how a company has started to use social media to directly engage with...
TRANSCRIPT
acebook& Customer Service
How a company has started to use social media to directly engage with their customers
22nd November 2011
Jamie McDonaldCustomer Service Director07710 934702
• Should we do anything at all?
• If we do, who should do it: PR, Marketing or Customer Service?
• What style: neutral, active or robust?
• How do we handle conflict, arguments and untruths?
• How do we defend our people, team, company, brand and client?
• What are other people doing?
The Great Debate…
Key Tactics
• Owned by the Customer Service Team
• Led from the front initially to help convince our stakeholders
• Adopted a proactive robust approach to issues
• Informal professional language; consciously different to a complaint letter
The Three Golden Rules
• Customers should receive the same service & priority as other channels
• Public criticism of named team members is deleted with an explanation
• Criticism of our client is not allowed as they have no right of reply
Our Facebook Model
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Growth in headline membership was straight line for the first few thousand
Weekly member acquisition is irregular, bordering on a random distribution
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• Our resourcing quotient seems to be about 0.25 FTE for every 1,000 active members
• Posting times broadly mirror the traditional demand profile, apart from Chardonnay posts, and Stella posts…
Phase 1: What We Found…
Phase 1: What We Found…
Weekends
Thursday 27th October 2011
Most posts are negative
But a lot are positive
Most customers who post
think it’s a great idea
But some compliments
are very backhanded
Some customers
don’t always tell the whole
truth
But about 99% are true
Internal doubters far outnumber
external ones
Customers start to help and support each other
We’ve got a whole new
dimension of
internal 360o
feedback
You have to get used to not being in
control…
Social media must sit within customer service
“Social media has changed customer service from being a support function to being an extension of marketing” (agency2, Call Centre Expo: Oct 2011)
Phase 1: Ten Key Things
• Facebook sub-team being established within the Customer Care Team
• They use their first names only, and no photos
• My senior team and I still dip in, visibly and frequently
• Cover extended to evenings and weekends
• Response within 60 mins (8am to 8pm), or by 8.30 next day (8pm to 8am)
• Evolved from “Group” to “Page”, and content enrichment underway
• Twitter evaluated but our customers don’t associate us with this, yet…
• Proprietary monitoring applications reviewed but not taken forward, yet…
• Facebook will be eclipsed at some point, but we are on the road now
• It’s become a way of life…
Phase 2: Making it BAU
Phase 2 – A Way of Life
• If you don’t do something your customers will do it anyway, far worse!
• Setting up an official presence opens a new world of pain & pleasure
• You’ll get a wealth of valuable feedback, actions and ideas
• You’ll get credit from customers for doing it
• You need to take your internal stakeholders with you; remember 1961
• “A human face representing the company” (agency2, Oct 2011)
• Losing control can be really good…
Final thoughts…