I love that companies are finally starting to pay attention to what people are saying about them on the web. That's great. They get it.
But, and this is a big but. Just because you're paying attention to social media doesn't mean you can stop delivering excellent customer service.
Case in point, I have been trying to reach out to WebTrends and Omniture for the past couple of weeks to get some questions answered about a major analytics inititiative that we're managing for a client - a very big client. So, you would think that I would get a quick response regardless. There is money to be made.
Nope. No email, no automated messages, no phone call. They must be too busy. Webtrends eventually emailed and send me some brochure, which is not what I asked for. I had a number of specific questions that I had submitted, which I then emailed them again.
Silence. Again. What is wrong with you people?
Then I tweet about it on both my personal and Scrappy Marketing accounts. Ten minutes later I get a response from #OmnitureCares apologizing they hadn't tweeted back sooner.
Actually Omniture, your response to my tweet was plenty fast, and hopefully someone will answer my questions now.
The lesson is a different one, however. Listening and responding to social media is commendable. But, much more importantly, companies can't forget to focus on world class traditional customer service in the first place - especially not service providers. Most consumers are very reasonable and if you deliver a quality service, few will complain.
So, before you go out and build your social media monitoring program, please take a hard look at your current customer service practices. Social media can teach you what you need to fix. It can't fix a problem. Great customer service can.
Hello Mario:
I am a technical support manager for Webtrends. How can we help?
Wayne Denman
Webtrends
Technical Support Manager
Siegart, I'm sorry that Webtrends didn't address your needs your first time through our system. It's never good to hear when a customer has a bad experience with service. Our customers have repeatedly told analysts that our customer service is the best in the industry, and your experience is the exception. I'm going to have our team analyze what the breakdown was to prevent it from happening again in the future. I'm glad that we also monitor Twitter so we could catch you in 10 mins from the time you tweeted.
Would it be helpful for you if I share what I found out about where our breakdown was?
Hello Mario:
Please feel free to contact me directly at wayne.denman@webtrends.com
Wayne Denman
Technical Support Manager
Webtrends
Brilliantly said! You still have to answer the phones, and answer emails-people typically resort to Twitter after they have exhausted other lines of communication.
Nice post, Mario.
Mario,
Just sent you an email an I would love to chat to find out what went wrong. Either way we be excited to speak with you about your need and how we might be able to help. I agree that there is always room for improvement in "traditional systems", but Social IMO helps greatly as without this blog post, and the fact that i monitor all mentions of my brand on Social through our Webtrends Social Measurement platform, we wouldnt have been able to find and fix this obvious oversight.
So i think they are both needed; traditional and social compliment each other, they do not compete, and together allow us to do a better job. Either way in this case, allow me to apologize for the oversight and offer my direct contact info so we can quickly get a conversation going.
Warm regards,
Adam Cohen
Enterprise Account Manager - Webtrends
Northern California & Pacific NW
503-553-2433
Mario,
This was a good read and you brought up many great points. I agree that Social Media alone can not be the "golden-ticket" to saving your customer service issue. It can be a great tool for companies that have figured it out.
I've had 3 different companies respond back to me via twitter, but only 1 company ever really did anything about it. The other two were merely giving the appearance of caring, and in fact for all I know they had a bot of some sort reply with a nice note when they found a tweet with their brand and #fail in the same message.
The other side of having a good social media customer service plan is something that the company itself has little control over. The community of customers and users that are willing to pipe up / pitch in and try and help out other users. Your example of Omniture is a great one. You can also follow #ColdFusion for a day and see another active / helpful community. I am sure that there are other communities out there, these are just the two I am most familiar with.
-Rudi
I think no matter which means of communication companies use for support, they must reply to customer requests in a timely manner. Phone, email, Twitter, live chat, tickets... they're all good and efficient. However, when a phone number, an email or a Twitter address is provided on a website, there should be someone to reply on the other end, and fast.
In my opinion, social media doesn't kill customer service, as long as it's advertised and used properly. If a company prefers Twitter for issue reporting, fine, but say so on your website. Hence, no one will waste time on the phone trying to reach you.