Social media is not simply a broadcast channel – and brands that use social media solely for this purpose are never going to get the most out of social media. Social media is a two-way conversation, so get prepared to join in.
Social customer service has exploded in popularity over the last few years, and customer expectations are only continuing to increase. Your customers will contact you via their own preferred channel, not yours. It doesn’t matter if you deliver excellent customer service via phone, if you’re not up to scratch on social, then you will encounter problems.
To put the need for social customer service into perspective, 53% of customers who ask a brand a question on Twitter expect a response within one hour. Not 4 hours or 24 hours: one hour. Which means that your customer service team need to be fully on the ball at all times, monitoring and responding to comments on a real-time basis.
If companies don’t respond within the one hour time frame, 38% of people feel more negatively towards the brand, and 60% will then take action against the brand using social media!
That’s a powerful statistic, and a warning shot for brands that do not have a social customer service strategy in place.
If you would like to know more about social customer service then stay tuned. Martha Roberts, Head of Service Communication at Royal Mail, will be speaking at an exclusive Q&A on social customer communications at the Social Speakeasy this evening.
Martha knows a thing or two about social service, dealing with 29 million UK households, setting up a social team and managing Royal Mail’s digital customer service reputation. She plans to discuss:
- Kick-starting the social customer approach with what customers want – including running towards the tough stuff!
- Getting organised and integrated across a large company including customer services, PR and internal communications
- Using social service as a lever for fixing what matters to customers
- Learning and communicating when your organisation ‘shines’ – the power of social feedback to motivate and overcome traditional silos
Follow the #SocialSpeakeasy hashtag on Twitter tonight from 7pm-8pm. And keep an eye out for Martha’s presentation and insights from her Q&A on this blog after the event!
