Customer Service

There’s no doubt that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become popular sites for many consumers looking to communicate with friends and family, so is now the time for companies to take a closer look at these channels as a means of building closer relationships with their customers?

Social networks enable you to interact with your customers on a number of levels. You can use them to solicit feedback from customers; send out product update bulletins; use them to help manage the reputation of your brand as well as deal with complaints.

Using Facebook
More and more companies are setting up Facebook profiles to get closer to their customers and enhance their customer support. Take the well known UK high street retailer Marks and Spencer. They’ve got a Facebook profile over at: http://www.facebook.com/MarksandSpencer) which enables them to promote special offers and competitions to their customer base, disseminate news and promote content appearing on their own website.

There’s also a discussion forum and an events section too. Through Facebook M&S have been able to build an online community that enables them to stay close to their most loyal customers, learn more about them and what they think about M&S. The M&S Facebook site currently has over 33,000 fans!

Using Twitter
In the US, the convenience store chain Fresh & Easy, is harnessing Twitter to engage with customers and inform them of new offers and store openings.(http://twitter.com/fresh_and_easy)

In addition, it is also using Twitter as a channel for customer support such as answering customer queries about missing products in certain stores, and about services offered.

One post or ‘tweet’ involved a customer noting that stock levels had seemed “a little sparse” on one of his recent visits to a local branch. Immediately Fresh & Easy responded stating that stock levels at the end of the year tend to be a bit low due to shipping schedules.

Though perhaps not the most riveting of correspondence, Twitter does help to establish loyalty by giving customers an active way of communicating with the company’s managers. The Fresh & Easy Twitter feed has over 4000 followers to date!

Here are 5 tips on how to use Twitter to great effect for customer service:

1. Track the entire conversation using tools like http://monitter.com and http://tweetbeep.com
2. Make customers aware of your presence by placing a button on your website ask customers to follow you
3. Respond quickly and transparently – the key to great customer service is speed and quality of your response. When you find someone complaining about something, “@ reply” asking if you can help.
4. Be engaged in the conversations – Twitter gives you the opportunity to have a conversation with your customers, so talking to them about what they like and dislike about your brand will give you some interesting insights about what people actually think.
5. Be authentic – when ‘tweeting’ make sure you’re being honest. It’s easier than ever for customers to research whether or not you are telling the truth, and if you aren’t then they’ll certainly ‘tweet’ about that too!

Paul Jordan is Relationship Marketing Manager for Jobs in Customer Service – a niche job board for customer service jobs, contact and call centre vacancies.

http://www.jobsincustomerservice.co.uk