I’ve read thousands of blog posts and Tweets praising Twitter and how powerful it is as a customer service tool. It’s not, and it’s SO obvious that it’s not that it’s baffling why otherwise seemingly intelligent people don’t seem to see through this. Twitter offers NO advantage over any other means of providing customer service. It’s not technologically advanced. If anything it’s old technology recycled and re marketed. Participation on Twitter and other social media platforms GENERALLY increases overhead, and while it may be seen as a business necessity (perhaps wrongly), it sure as heck cannot be shown as a superior tool.
Here’s an example. You. Go here and read this anecdote about Westjet. Yes, it’ll open a new window so you won’t lose your place. Go on. Shoo.
Awright, you don’t want to, here’s the deal. He had a problem with a flight, called by phone and got nothing, and then got the problem resolved on Twitter. From this he concludes:
1. Smart companies are embracing Twitter to address customer service problems quickly.
2. Smart companies who employ tactic #1 are reaping huge benefits as the exchange is done in public (while a phone converation with a call centre rep is done in private).
3. As its popularity grows, Twitter may soon become as inefficient as the call centre when it comes to resolving customer service problems, but for now, this is uncharted territory.
4. I think the smartest companies will be consistent in their approach to customer service, regardless of how the customer engages them (mail, fax, email, call centre, blogs, in person twitter, smoke signal, etc). In my example, this is an opportunity for improvement at WestJet.
5. Smart companies recognize that resolving customer service problems represent a spectacular marketing opportunity. Making something right is best way to keep a customer for life. It’s hard to put a price tag on that.
So, Point 1. His experience has nothing to do with this conclusion. In fact, companies are moving into social media not because they are smart but because a) competitors are doing so and people don’t know any better, and b) there “appears to be a lot of people there” (actually there aren’t nearly as many as it seems).
Point 2: “Smart companies who employ tactic #1 are reaping huge benefits as the exchange is done in public (while a phone converation (sic) with a call centre rep is done in private).” No. actually, by and large this is an illusion. The viewership/readership of tweets like Westair might have posted is minimal. Tiny. In fact, far more people will read the initial complaint than will read the efforts by any company to resolve it. Sorry, but that’s just the reality of how Twitter works. In fact, the battle companies face in social media is so impossible (countering bad press) and so cost intensive) that companies would be far better off if the platforms never existed.
Point3: 3. As its popularity grows, Twitter may soon become as inefficient as the call centre when it comes to resolving customer service problems, but for now, this is uncharted territory”. It ain’t going to get better, but here’s the thing. It is currently HORRIBLY inefficient NOW. It’s not working, and all you need to do to verify this is do the appropriate searched in Twitter on companies like Dell, and HP (try HP customer service) to see how badly they are getting killed online due to the INEFFICIENCY AND IMPOSSIBILITY OF operating on Twitter.
Point4: “I think the smartest companies will be consistent in their approach to customer service, regardless of how the customer engages them (mail, fax, email, call centre, blogs, in person twitter, smoke signal, etc). In my example, this is an opportunity for improvement at WestJet“. This is perhaps the biggest misconception on the part of social media proponents. The intent is accurate. The facts aren’t. Each additional channel of access for customers INCREASES customer service overhead. ANY additional channel will not replace any existing one. So, if the money allocated for customer service is constant, it gets spread over multiple channels, and customer service overall suffers.
The writer’s errors come from ignorance, I suspect, of business.
Here’s the real fatal error. He compares lousy customer service from person A on the phone to really good customer service from person b in Twitter, and then concludes it’s TWITTER that causes the better service. An 8 year old can see through this. The better service on Twitter had NOTHING to do with Twitter at all.
Robert
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my post, http://www.swag20.com/?p=277. You raise some excellent points and I will not disagree with you when you say that social media is hugely misunderstood as a business tool. However, I think we come from this from 2 different sides of the coin. Allow me to respectfully respond to your post.
My experiences stem from the fact that I am an entrepreneur in the online promotional products business. I have several staff, thousands of customers and plenty of overhead to keep me up at night, so I am very conscious of where I allocate funds. I do not claim to be a “social media consultant/expert” in any way, shape or form. Everything I wrote about in this post came from my experiences as someone who runs a business and has learned to navigate my way around social media from a practical perspective.
Here are some stories I can share with you about how social media has been used as a customer service tool in my business.
1. We have dealt with flare ups on Twitter before, specifically as it related to a product we supplied to a tech conference a year ago. The product (a magnet desk toy) was not well received because of the attendees’ concern about the effect on hard drives and cell phones. It was our oversight and we were to blame 100% (in many ways, just like WestJet). I had 2 choices: hide or jump in. I chose the latter and identified the critics and tweeted an apology for the oversight and directed people towards an area at registration where we would take back any magnets. I then shot a video of the magnets next to a blackberry and showed they presented no harm while it was turned off and on. By jumping in quickly and demonstrating that we really cared allowed people to see that they were dealing with human beings, vs faceless companies that read lame customer service scripts. Our efforts were rewarded by several supportive tweets, including a few from the original critics. The conversation turned from hostile to neutral to positive (within about 4 hrs).
Twitter is a unique medium. I agree that it is terribly inefficient at times (an unfiltered tweet stream is one such example), however it is a public forum and while the initial complainers get air time, there is no question that the company response gets air time as well. In our case, our apology and YouTube video was retweeted many more times that the original complaining tweets. In the case of WestJet, the fact that you and I have posted and tweeted this to several thousand people is not bad advertising for $1000.
Like I said in the WestJet example, I wish we never went through this magnet experience, but the silver lining was that many people saw how we reacted and that earned us trust. I am sure we lost some potential customers, but there was a net gain in the end. Had we done nothing, our brand would have suffered.
You raise a good point about the potential for these additional channels to reduce the effectiveness of customer service across the board. However, my experience in my business suggests just the opposite. 5 years ago, 75% of our customer service issues were addressed over the phone, while 25% were handled over email. Resources were allocated accordingly. Today, 30% of customer service issues are handled over the phone, 50% over email and 20% via social media channels. The pie has not grown, it has just been carved up differently. How does this translate into staff time and company resources? My team simply spends less time on the phone and more time on email and social media. We have moved to where our customers have gone. As I said in one of my “lessons learned”, we offer the same level of quality customer service no matter how we are contacted. The fact that we are spending more time on Twitter than we did 2 years ago does not change a thing. It’s just where some of our customers have migrated.
Finally, social media has been very good for business for us. 20% of all new accounts signed up in the past 12 months came through our online and social media efforts (compared to 3% the year prior). From this pool of new accounts, we have done actual business with 50% of them already. If Twitter blows up tomorrow, we will simply keep our ear to the ground and follow our customers where they move next.
“The viewership/readership of tweets like Westair might have posted is minimal. Tiny.”
That’s not really the point, is it? I don’t follow Westair, but I might follow a complainant, so I’m aware of the problem. By responding effectively – whether through twitter or phone call – you act to neutralize the complaint and turn it into a positive experience, which is then also tweeted. There’s nothing new about this approach – ‘word-of-mouth’ has just become ‘word-of-tweet’ with so many more people. I used to talk about how Oakley once replaced my sunglasses for free, but only told my small group of friends. Now I can tell hundreds/thousands of twitter followers. And how many more resources has the company dedicated to this process? None. They already have customer service reps – as previous commenter says, they’re just working the web instead of the phones. Companies that are getting killed on twitter were already getting killed on customer service anyway – it’s just another way for them to suck.
Twitter didn’t make the company provide better service, but it made sure more people knew about it.