As a member of the Puget Sound American Marketing Association’s Board of Directors, I have plenty of exposure to social media programming and have developed, through a number of perspectives, thoughts on how to simplify social media thinking and practices. Fundamentally, social media for businesses functions either as a customer service medium, media outlet, or both. The question facing most companies is how to treat it.
Customers are increasingly using social media for customer service issues ranging from complaints to questions to ordering. Zappos, a company built on customer service, wrote, edited, and published the playbook on social media use as a customer service tool. Without going into well documented specifics, Zappos uses social media outlets as companies use the phone or e-mail. I have three thoughts to summarize/clarify social media use in customer service:
- Social media belongs partly in the hands of the customer service function to avoid unproductive and unnecessary handoffs.
- Complaints, questions and ordering are the ultimate example of engagement.
- Over the top, timely, and friendly customer service will always trump controlling the message (tone, personality, spelling, grammar) regardless of business size.
Training programs and the ease of social media use can accelerate the adoption of additional tools to satisfy customers and engage prospects meaningfully. Return on these efforts can be measured through correlated sales, customer service efficiencies, and customer satisfaction measurements.
