Conversational Media Group Blog

Subtitle: “Social Media’s Positive Influence On Customer Service” - Does this sound like an oxymoron to you?

Part I of Social Media: A Customer Serivce Strategy, describes Millie Garfield’s, MyMomsBlog, unhappy experience with a major financial institution - Capital One. Not knowing if Capital One was in tune with monitoring the blog buzz I searched thru their corporate site and eventually found an email link to a person in the PR department. I kindly sent off an email explaining the the situation. I thought it was nice of me to go through the trouble. I mean if your company isn’t tracking the buzz about your brands and an influencer blog like MyMomsBlog was dishing a product wouldn’t you want to know?

Social media and customer care is addessed by Valeria Maltoni’s Fast Company Expert Blogger on her post, Chasing Customers Away. She asks a very interesting question:

In this new business context where social media is gaining in credibility and scope can you afford to ignore these inquiries?

Note: Valeria writes about customer communications. I found it amusing that that Fast Company is listing her blog under the category of Innovation. Sadly, Fast Company may be right. Excellent customer care might well be an innovative strategy.

Do companies understand the implications of consumer generated media? The extent that social media influences purchase decisions and the perception of the brand should not be taken lightly. The following comment from Valeria’s post is hard hitting:

The other lesson to be learned, now I see that this story is a couple years old, is that the history stays around and even if Chase has improved, its even more reason for everyone else to do something now, before all their old laundry comes out about how they chased their customers away.

However, people are postively, as well as, negatively talking about products, services, companies and their employees. Here are a couple of examples.

Unilever - Heard this from Charlene Li, Forrester Research, at New Communication Forum 2006. As the story goes .. Dan Entin couldn’t find his fav deodorant - Degree For Men. He did what many a blogger might do and posted about his quest on his blog Two Percent Nation. Unilever was listening and sent him a carton of Degree.

Kudos to Mike for seeing what I wrote and taking action to make a loyal customer even more devoted.

Radio Shack - Kristie’s, WebMomz, experience is about a Radio Shack sales clerk who spent 20 minutes hooking up all the assorted cords and parts and actually did some test recordings till we got everything working. Now that’s service! Here’s the comment from Radio Shack manager Tony Rosen

Thanks for the positive feedback Kristie. It appreciate the recognition you sent to my company. It always feels good to know i did something positive for a customer, we usually only get to hear about the negative. Hope everything worked out for you, and look forward to seeing you in my store in the future.

In this world that spins too fast, consistent customer delight is one of the most powerful branding strategies you can put into play. Using social media, honestly and transparently, to help get that message across makes good business sense.

However, there’s another element that reinforces the importance of using social media as a customer service tactic. The element of trust. Edelman conducts an annual a multi-country research study seeking to understand the state of trust in institutions. In Richard Edelman’s summary of the Edelman Trust Barometer 2007 he says -

The remarkable rise of the “Person Like Yourself” as credible spokesperson from 2003-6 (from 22% to 68% in the US in that period) saw a decline this year (in the US, trusted by 51%), but still ranks as the #1 trusted spokesperson in most of the countries surveyed.

There is a general decline in trust in all spokespeople and sources of information. That means a company must tell its story consistently and in multiple venues in order to achieve trust.

When it’s all said and done, customer delight has to do with letting people know - “You matter. I hear you. I’m paying attention to you.”