This is a weekly Friday installment from Stuzo documenting consumer engagement tips and tricks, both for day-to-day community management and for large-scale custom engagements. Hopefully this post will spark an idea for your brand or client, and if it does, be sure to let us know in the comments.
This month we have discussed how brands are using Twitter, YouTube and Facebook Walls to address customer service issues. Continuing our Social Customer Service Month, let’s take a look at how brands are using customer service applications to address consumer needs through evergreen – or “always on,” rather than campaign-based – solutions. Since the Facebook Wall can become clogged for large brands, it can become difficult for customer service questions to be funnelled properly in order to get the best possible response for the user. These evergreen solutions can be presented to the user in various ways ranging from an FAQ to a rating system to static tab that directs users to real-time customer support.
By having an evergreen tab dedicated to customer service a brand shows that they are proactively committed to addressing consumer issues and will drive users who are looking for actual answers to the right channel. Many times this can be done in the form of an FAQ or forum where users can share questions and an administrator or moderator can give the best answer or mark a community answer as the best result. Thomas Cook does an excellent job of supporting their consumers by allowing users to not only ask questions but by driving conversation by responding multiple times within the same thread if needed to sufficiently answer a user’s question. In addition to allowing consumers to ask questions Thomas Cook also allows users to categorize their post so that it can be answered most effectively.
When a brand does not want to bring its full customer support system into the social space they can simply place a static tab that will drive users to other social properties or directly to a live support center on the brand’s website. T-Mobile offers consumers a variety of options to receive answers to their questions and concerns. These answers can be in the form of additional social channels, online forums, and live chat through the brand site or by directing users to find their local store to receive in person customer service. While the consumer will not receive an answer within the Facebook experience they may receive a better and quicker response based on brand capabilities.
Another way that brands can address customer concerns is to give them the opportunity to rate services or products when they may not have a specific question. By doing this the brand will prevent some of the negative feedback that consumers may leave on the Wall and be able to sort responses effectively. AT&T allows users to browse through multiple categories to select the products they have engaged with and provide feedback for both the brand other consumers to make informed decisions. This allows the users to have a sense of community and to feel that their feedback makes a difference because they see rankings change as the engage.
Regardless of how a brand decides to address customer within that social space it is important to show consumers that their opinions matter and can have an effect on how the brand operates. From these examples we can see that any brand that has a customer service component needs a customized consumer experience to meet those needs. Social channels like Facebook have put an onus on brands to go out of their way to please consumers and deliver a higher quality of customer service. What are you as a brand doing to provide consumers with a clear outlet for their questions and concerns?
