Week 5: Case Study

For this post, I’ll be looking at how Coles, a supermarket retailer operating in Australia, has been using social media, especially to communicate with their customers.

Social Media

The social media that Coles is most active on is Facebook. Here, the company has two accounts, on for Coles and another for recipes. The main account's page is focused on posting a wide range of content including information about new offerings in store, product recalls, sales, information about charities Coles involved with, as well as contests and giveaways. It also has some recipes, although Coles also has another page dedicated to them. Their main Facebook also links to a part of their website for online customer service, however any issues or queries customers have don’t appear to be addressed on the Facebook page itself.

Google+ is another area of social media Coles is using. This appears to be basically an ‘edited’ version of the company’s Facebook page, showing some of the more important posts and not updating as frequently. On this service, just like with Facebook, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of interaction with and between customers.

Coles also has accounts on Twitter. One is the main Coles profile, which generally serves the same purpose and tweets the (exact) same posts as Facebook. There is also an account for Coles Online, the company’s online store. The tweets from this account are usually to let users know about any technical issues the system may be experiencing which would affect them, however, there are also tweets about sales available through the store or competitions the company is running. However, both accounts also answer a lot of customer queries, in a casual yet professional way, and it does a lot to both help those people and humanise the company.

Another area where Coles is quite active is on YouTube. Here, they have a range of content available, including cooking technique tutorials, videos from and about competitions they have run, reports about the company from the media, and advertisements, both current ones and 'classic' old ones for the nostalgic user. Here, the company is putting then platform to good use, providing their subscribers with a wide range of content and most are sure to find something that interests them.

Another website that Coles is using well is Pinterest. Mainly this is used as another platform to share their recipes, however it worked especially effectively here. Coles is able to sort those recipes into various categories by pinning them to different boards. It also places the focus on pictures of the food, rather than the written recipe, making exploring the board very visually appealing. Coles has also has created some original content for this platform, rewarding those which track them on this social media tool instead of spamming them with posts the have already seen on other sites.  A great example of this which I especially enjoyed is the pictures of the carved fruit.

Coles also has a blog on their website. This contains longer posts than their other social media platforms, allowing for those who are interested to learn more about the subject to do so. The blog includes a wide range of post subjects, although they are mainly about new products. They also include posts about various charities the company is involved with, cooking or food tips and posts about their supplier farmers. The blog has a good mix of posts that have already featured in other places as well as ones exclusive to the blog.

McKinsey Value Levers

Coles is using their social media to help achieve two of their organisation functions, marketing and sales, as well as customer service. Of the value levers which fall under marketing and sales, the one that Coles is implementing the most effectively is ‘use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction’, however, they do really need to work on their interaction in most platforms. The company is almost certainly also trying to leverage ‘generate and foster sale leads’, and ‘derive customer insights’, and they have a great opportunity and the ability to do these effectively.

Coles is also beginning to utilise the ‘provide customer care via social technologies’ lever in customer service. However, Coles still has a lot of work to do in this area on certain platforms, as well as generally fostering more connection and interactions with their customers.

Do you know of any retail companies using social media and other social technologies more effectively than Coles? Let me know in the comments.

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.