Social Engagement to Enhance Customer Service

I recently blogged on using social for customer service.  Most of that post focused on listening.  I want to focus this post on the engagement portion.  I’ll break it down by some common sense items you need to think about, policies you may need to modify, and then note some of the tools you could use.

Common Sense Items to Consider

First off, this isn’t rocket science.  It’s basic customer service concepts taken to the social paradigm.  You want to retain customers by treating them with respect and by knowing enough information about them to understand who they are and what they mean to your company.  Keep that in mind.  If you listened to what I had to say in my “listening” blog post then I can assume that you’ve done just that and figured out who is saying what and what’s important enough to merit your attention and response.  

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Here’s my list of items you need to consider:

1. Not every bad remark needs to be addressed.  Most people would find it spooky to be contacted for a comment they left on a blog post or tweet. That sounds big brotherish to them.  Also, if they complain on things which you have no control like poor savings rates, you may not want to talk to them.
2. Focus on social comments which you can impact.  “I can’t believe I’m standing in #mybank’s line just to deposit my check.”  That might merit a quick response with a link to a new remote check deposit app.
3. One team cannot respond to everything.  Yes, it might make sense to create a social engagement team but they shouldn’t be expected to answer it all.  Some items might be PR nightmares. Some situations may be best handled by a local branch rep.  Other problems may require input from an exec as you bring up potential responses.
4. Responding may require software and good workflow or business process to route the issue and assign a response.
5. Some responses can work in the original social medium. Retweeting something or replying to a tweet for example.
6. But many responses will most likely go directly to some direct contact method that becomes less public and more personal.
7. If you resolve someone’s problems, ask them to talk about it on a social channel.  They made the initial complaint known to the world, perhaps the fact that it was resolved should be out there as well.
8. You should analyze your responses and their potential impacts.  Social engagement can be hard to justify but just like a call center, it has an impact. Define it, document it, and tout it.
9. Develop a social media policy and compliance guidelines for personal social comments (Example: Francesca’s ex-CFO was fired after tweeting about a board meeting that caused stock prices to surge before earnings were released) with official channels.   That could bring it’s own pain and agony.

Ahhhhh Sweet Governance

So yes, this topic makes even the stoutest of hearts quiver in anticipation of endless boredom as you work to define what you are allowed to do and how you are allowed to do it.  Of course, if you have to talk to legal, maybe the quiver represent less anticipation and more fear or agony.

Regardless, if your company has a blanket policy of no social or they restrict responses to just PR or Communications then you have your work cut out for you.  Just like a good PR group refuses to handle common customer services issues over the phone, they should push to ensure that they don’t have to handle social commentary / complaints.  As I noted above, answers can come from many different people ranging from easily solvable (CSR’s) to the intractable and damaging (Legal and PR).  You need to setup governance policies for who can say what and when.  You should also plan out your workflow and responses for certain types of social commentary to improve your responses and your response time.  Social slows down for no one.

Tech Tools

Social is still a wild wild west and I don’t know all the tools. Here’s some you might consider when engaging:

1. Radian 6 has a full suite of listening, analyzing, and engagement tools
2. HootSuite specializes in listen and engage solutions
3. Oracle recently bought Involver to round out their entire social media play.

Side Note: I’ve been doing a lot of research and I have to say that Radian6’s ebooks give a lot of information which I use here and in other conversation. In the spirit of attribution, you should know I found them extremely useful.