Twitter has become a vibrant and excitable channel for customer complaints and praise. Corporations, large and small, have seen a massive rise in customer Tweets as they begin to engage through social media. Some companies are now citing as much as 10% of all customer interaction via their contact centers coming in through social media. According to Gartner, that number is set to rise significantly over the next 5 years.
For the most part, this means more Tweets. Those customer Tweets gain volume and become a public rant when unanswered. When responded to promptly, however, those same customers can become your greatest brand advocates.
So what makes Twitter a different channel than the other traditional channels your company may have chosen to engage with customers over? Well, the first is that your company didn't choose to engage with customers over Twitter so much as your customers chose to engage with your business. When asked at a recent event in NYC who owns Social Customer Service, a room poll revealed that 71% believed Customer Service should own and 11% said Marketing should own the channel. The next speaker from a major hotel chain suggested that, actually, "the customer owns the channel".
Of course, we all know that this is a very public channel; whereas your other forms of more structured communications are private and 1:1, this is a very public affair. Both the rant and the recognition can quickly attract commentary and retweets as the issue goes viral.
What is perhaps considered a little less is that Tweets are also very emotional and largely 'in the moment'. A large number of us are increasingly engaging on mobile and that means that a customer is likely engaging with your business not after the event when emotions have cooled but rather while experiencing the problem or while feeling the joy.
This means two things for your business.
1) The first is that you'll never get access to such an authentic level of customer insight. Cast aside polls and begin to mine this extraordinarily rich data. Best in Class research show that firms that are learning to embrace this data to create new products, change service protocols or manage new relationships are yielding impressive results. In fact, 83% of contact centers with Best in Class solutions for social customer service are likely to harness that data of interactions and share it with members of the business outside the contact center, compared to only 52% using other types of solutions.
2) The second is that you have a real opportunity to 'meet the Tweet' and to engage with a customer AS they are experiencing your business. For hospitality, travel, utilities and retail this provides a chance to build relationships directly with customers around the world who are touching your business in real time.
Your ability to structure this chaos and turn it into meaningful conversations in real time can make an enormous difference, and if you're not engaging with this live channel and working to dynamically resolve issues, manage queries, upgrade experiences then you are missing a vital connection with your customers.
So...how is your company converting social customer chaos into a high value service channel?
