Social Customer Service

Your Story Begins Here

As a forward-thinking brand manager, you have taken your brand into the ever-changing world of social media. You worked with a well-known, highly sought after agency to create stunning and engaging presences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. You are creating content that is generating likes, retweets, and +1s like they are going out of style. Your content is generating click throughs to trackable sales oriented pages on your site.

Life is good

Then you notice something. Something you didn’t plan for, something overlooked by far too many brand managers. Your customers are asking you questions, making suggestions, and issuing complaints to your social channels.

What is this? Don’t they know that Facebook is supposed to just be our brand talking to them, and them following the instructions of our well thought out and highly motivational calls to action? They really expect our brand to converse with them? Like we’re some kind of… equal?

The Earth Shattering Truth

The answer here is yes. Yes, your customers expect you to listen to them, and get this, respond to them.

When you set up social accounts for your brand, you are not simply creating a showroom where customers sign up to have branded messaging shouted at them 24 / 7. This is a two way conversation, and one that can, will, and is costing you business if you are not involved.

According to a recent report from Social Bakes, 70% of questions posted to Facebook or Twitter go completely unanswered by the brand. A brand that lives and dies on serving customers, McDonald’s, answered exactly zero of the 5,437 questions posted to their channels. Not a single question was answered. Starbucks faired slightly better with a .35% response rate. That’s a decimal point in front of the three.

Does Anyone do it Right?

Some brands are doing it right, though. Can you guess what industry leads the way? Has to be media organizations, with their incessant need to constantly talk to their audiences, right?

Wrong. Media companies were the absolute worst ranked at just 4.9%. The top three were the telecoms at 60.4% (think Comcast), airlines at 55% (like Jet Blue and American), and finance companies at 46.4% (does your bank respond to you?).

Think about that for a second. We are lauding praise on an industry for leading the social charge… and they ignore almost 40% of their customers. Imagine if you called your cable provider and they told you, “Sorry, but you were one of the two in five customers we don’t want to help today. Please try again later.” What would your response be?

Another rhetorical question to ask yourself is, “Would I ignore 40% of my customers if they walked into my office?” Can you imagine yourself standing in front of a customer, having them ask you a question, and simply not answering it at all? Not “I don’t know,” or “We’re sorry, we can’t do that,” but complete silence.

Awkward, right?

Adjusting Perception Adjusts Reality

The fact is, some brands understand that a Facebook page, Twitter account, or whatever social network it may be, is not simply a sign post in the ground, left to point customers to where to drop off their money. They are living, breathing, extensions of your brand, and they need to be treated as such.

Halo BCA, a financial company, gets it. A 95% response rate, and an average time of just three minutes. When was the last time you got an answer from your bank in three minutes or less? The top ten rounded out at a 27 minute response time, which is well within the one hour window that 42% of social users have come to expect. Keep in mind that another 25% expect an answer the same day, and 33% are willing to wait for an answer for a “few days or so.”

Back to our rhetorical question series, we suggest asking yourself, “Is 95% enough?” Is ignoring 5% of your customers an acceptable limit? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. At some point, maybe a question is just lost in the crush of customer comments pouring in (a good problem to have). At some point, though, shouldn’t your goal, as the person in charge of your brand’s voice, to be a 100% response rate? Shouldn’t every customer be helped?

Got it. It is Possible. Anything Else?

Anyone notice the choice not listed on the chart linked above? That’s right. There was no choice for “They don’t need to answer me.” Customers expect to be answered. On the phone, in person, by mail, by email, or on whichever social channel you decide is a fit for your brand. To your customer, your Facebook page is the same as your support line, and the same as calling you directly.

Set a goal for your company to respond to 100% of comments, questions, and concerns from your customers. Just like you would if they called you or stopped by your office… unless, of course, you make a habit of hanging up on customers or slamming the door in their face.