Some of you have experienced customer service from brands via social media. Of course with different outcomes. And some of you have never taken advantage of this medium to get product issues solved.
Sure, I’ve had my share too. When I was stuck in a Delta flight waiting to departure for 45 minutes and tweeted my frustration (just being an inpatient jerk, really), they got back to me almost immediately. Some time ago when my site was hacked, I contacted Network Solutions customer service department over the phone and they said it would take about 48 hours to get my site back up, I turned to Shashi Bellamkonda on Twitter and had my site back up in less than 2 hours.
Of course you can also run into issues with companies like Time Warner Cable that will completely ignore you no matter how nasty your tweets are.
Social media has proven to be a great vehicle to ensure customer satisfaction over the last few years. Companies that identify this are able to turn issues, something that’s considered negative, into positive outcomes right in front of the public eye.
But what is the current state of customer service in social media? The Social Media Customer Service Report by TNS answers this question in this nice infographic by Our Social Times.
What’s clear in this infographic, is how even tough we’re slowly starting to turn more to social media vehicles to address our issues with companies, the traditional platforms are still very important and, despite the clear advantages for these companies to establish this type of connection with consumers, 60% don’t even care about responding to these direct messages.
When people in this survey were asked what companies should do to improve their customer service experience, 53% responded that companies should address possible issues by posting video demonstrations and tutorials online and only 11% said companies should offer an immediate response on services like Twitter. It’s kind of surprising to me that 68% said they wanted companies to have a prominent contact number on their website, specially when we all know what a hassle a call to a customer service department can be.
A few weeks ago I talked about Social Commerce and the fact that, even tough we are used to making purchases online, these purchases are not happening on social platforms like Facebook as fast as we thought. We also know how, even tough brands are able to acquire spectacular numbers of fans, true engagement is very low.
Today we’re looking at something similar in customer service. Is the user only looking at social media as a social networking vehicle? Or is it that brands are not being successful in adopting these technologies to establish new communication channels?
One more thing I’d like to see, and I’m frankly surprised is not reflected in the infographic, is how platforms like GetSatisfaction are performing in the customer service segment.
How about Small Business? How about you?
I’d love to hear from you on a couple of subjects here:
- From the consumer perspective, have you considered approaching a brand with the purpose of solving an issue via social media? What was your experience? Do you prefer to get on a phone call?
- And as an entrepreneur, do you use social media channels to solve your customers issues? What is your experience?
Thank you. And, here is your infographic.
Infographic courtesy of Our Social Times
