The Role of @brandhelp – Why Customer Services Should Own Social Media

Viral social media transforms unconnected customers into a powerful audience. In a recent broadband service outage @BTCare peaked with 1,346 tweets at 3pm, from a total of 4,329 comments over the day. Poor customer service comments on social are visible to all, including management, in real-time. The evidence shows that there is a persistent dilemma: How well did @BTCare cope during Tuesday’s outage?

• 67% of companies believe that social customer service is the most pressing short-term priority for the contact centre
• 42% of service agents are unable to efficiently resolve customer issues due to disconnected systems and outdated interfaces (Sentiment)

Customer service works hard to retain customers, they rapidly defuse concerns and when customers are disappointed, ensure the appropriate operations department is informed, for example when “stock not in correct stores” or “poor customer service”.

• 68% of customers will leave you if they don’t feel you care about them
• It costs 4 to 10 times more to acquire customers than to retain them.

With these figures in mind, it is vital that, when using an @brandhelp account, it is monitored and managed correctly. Below we discuss best practice.

Rapidly resolve queries
Customers don’t want to wait for a response – and social provides immediacy. When you invest in customer service ‘@brandhelp’ on social, your customers feel heard, and will quickly learn that you are there to answer them.

• 71% of consumers receiving a quick brand response on social media would recommend that brand to others, compared to 19% of customers who received no response. (Source: NM Incite)
• It is especially useful for broadcasting urgent messages and updating customers, such as flight delays or services down.

Control and transparency
Upset customers vent. “@brandhelp” is the perfect way to give them a voice, within your control. You gain the opportunity to respond and set it right. Everyone sees that you care and retained customers spend more.

Personalise the experience
Personalising social media responses extends contact, person to person, on a new channel. You soften your contact with customers using social media’s informal conversation; the brand value is supported and customers feel heard.

What customer services need from a social media tool?
The fast paced real-time nature of delivering effective customer service on social media is demanding. It means you need to equip your team effectively. Carefully consider any investment and check that you are able to:

1. Monitor and automate data collection from a variety of social channels
2. Centralise data and synchronise actions within internal teams
3. Implement simple easy-to-follow agent workflows ensuring rapid customer response
4. Monitor agent activity in real time on dashboards and with tailored reports
5. Empower supervisors to flexibly control delivery and authority by agent
6. Provide useful standard answers together with staged approval processes
7. Ensure consistent quality and compliance with applicable regulations.

Customer services can make a strong case for their ownership of your organisation’s social media platforms.