Week 3: Social Media and Customer Service

According to a report published by the McKinsey Global Institute, various applications of social technologies within a business can produce value for that business via 10 ‘value levers’. These 10 value levers fall under 5 areas of the business’ value chain: product development; operations and distribution; marketing and sales; customer service; and enterprise-wide levers. One of these levers, which falls under customer service, is ‘provide customer care via social technologies’.

When customers receive bad service or unforseen inconveniences, they often turn to their social media of choice to vent their frustrations. It is now becoming expected that a company replies to these customers or it may become a PR issue, damaging the company’s reputation.

By implementing customer service solutions, businesses can reap many benefits. It reduces the workload on traditional call centre staff, as the answers provided become available for other customers to search through and other customers or certified experts from outside the company can also help out those in need. These technologies also allow companies to react to or control issues which could have the potential to damage the company’s public image.

As previously mentioned on this blog, Twitter is becoming a great way for companies to interact with their customers. Some businesses now have Twitter accounts devoted to helping and responding to customer issues. Twitter is an effective method of communicating with customers as both the customer and employee are able to view information about the other, making the experience more personal and answers are approximately real time. However, around 70% of customer issues raised on Twitter aren’t responded to. There are also certain legal issues, such as in America,  banks are only able to take a customer’s name and  zip code via a direct or private message.

T-Mobile is a mobile network provider which is using social tools for customer service in an effective manner. The company has Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and forums where customers are able to contact the company. T-Mobile is one of the best business users of these tools in the customer care area, with an average response time on Facebook of 51 minutes and a response rate of 70.4%. The company also has a Facebook app titled T-Mobile Support, which allows a customer to live chat with a member of the support staff. In 2013, the company ran a campaign where they removed their contract termination fees, meaning that the business had to provide a high quality customer experience to retain their business. As Scott Tweedy, the vice president of customer services at T-Mobile stated, “that meant putting our customers at the centre of everything”. Part of this initiative was implementing the social media tools, as stated above. The company found that customer satisfaction increased by 31%, call deflection increased by 40%, call backs decreased by 10% and the support team’s productivity increased by 21%.

As you can see, it isn’t just ‘keeping up with the times’ when a business uses social media to interact with their customers, it also makes great business sense. Many more companies should begin implementing tools like T-Mobile did, and they will see results! Do you know of any other companies which give great customer support via social media? Tell me in the comments.