Customer Service in a Social Media Age
If you’re like me, you’ve had more than one bad call centre experience. You know the ones… you have to repeat the same story three times, wait 20 minutes or more, get sent all over the place, and probably still don’t get the answer you need.
In the 1990s, driven by a push for ever more profit, companies focused on efficiency and built a huge machinery to serve customers at the lowest possible cost. A customer call was seen as a necessary evil. Customers had to gravitate around the whole company and find entry points, just like the sun was supposed to go around the earth a few centuries ago.
With social media, companies are just starting to realise that the opposite should happen.
Companies need to hang out where their customers are (i.e. social media) and then serve them in their channel of choice, and their mode of choice (real-time or asynchronous, online or offline).
In short, they need to gravitate around their customers.
If you can do this, not only will it help you retain customers, but this customer-centricity will help in reducing support costs (customers will begin to self-support), innovate better (instant feedback), and build customer advocacy (word of mouth).
A customer service revolution is just beginning, and a few leaders are blazing a trail. At CubeSocial, one of things we are busy figuring out, is how financial and professional services firms can best make use of these new channels. There are challenges, not least around privacy and confidentiality, but we are looking forward to playing our part in the change.
If you are curious about how you can use social media for customer service, get in touch with us via the contact form on our social media services page. Or, in the spirit of this post, just tweet us @cubesocial, and we’ll get right back to you!
