Toister Performance Solutions Archives | Execs In The Know

Three Social Media Trends in Customer Care

kiaadmin — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The following is a guest blog post by Jeff Toister, Founder of Toister Performance Solutions, Inc. Click here to view the original post on the Toister Solutions website.

A story about United Airlines and leggings recently went viral.

The gist was the airline was accused of denying boarding to two teenage girls because they were wearing leggings. There’s more to the story, but in the rush to share the news, many reporters wrote misleading headlines or got critical facts wrong.

It all started with a tweet from an uninformed bystander.

Tiffany Funk did an excellent job covering the story on the One Mile at a Time blog. It’s an excellent read that reveals many facts and misunderstandings.

What jumps out at me is this story presents a reminder that social media is increasingly critical to both Public Relations and Customer Care.

I turned to the new 2016 Customer Experience Benchmark report from Execs In The Know and COPC, Inc. for the latest trends on this important channel. You can purchase the full report on the Execs In The Know website (it’s a comprehensive read).

Here are some of the highlights that really stand out for me.

Trend #1: Which Department Owns Social Media?

In a situation like the one United Airlines faced, ownership is critical.

It was part Public Relations, where members of the public were outraged because of some false information. It was also part customer service, where the bystander sending the tweets to @united was still a United Airlines passenger.

That means these functions must work closely together, but only 21 percent of companies surveyed share responsibility between customer care, PR, and marketing. Here’s the breakdown:

One positive sign is that more companies than ever before are providing their social customer care agents with training.

Trend #2: Lack of Full Commitment

Many companies still aren’t fully committed to social media as a customer care channel.

The report reveals several areas where many companies are lacking. The first one is offering a consistent experience across all channels.

I suspect that “Somewhat” in this case really means, “No, but I wish it was Yes.”

Only 49 percent of organizations surveyed said there were plans in place to address this issue, so it’s likely to be an issue for awhile.

Now, look at how many companies engage in quality monitoring on social care interactions versus traditional channels like phone and email:

This shows that many companies aren’t really taking social media seriously as a customer care channel. This trend is even more evident when you look at where customer satisfaction is measured:

This is not to suggest that quality monitoring or customer satisfaction measurement should look exactly the same for phone and Twitter interactions. The key is having some process in place to ensure consistency and then adapting that process to each channel’s unique characteristics.

Trend #3: Response Time

Response time can be crucial.

In my interview with Al Hopper, co-founder of SocialPath Solutions, he described a situation where a company tweeted Black Friday sales promotions, but didn’t respond when customers tweeted back noting the company’s website was down.

Those customers felt ignored, especially when the company sent out another pre-scheduled promotional tweet without responding to customers.

Today’s social media customers want fast responses, but just 36 percent of companies surveyed report responding to customers in an hour or less. Contrast that with what customers say, where 61 percent want a response within the hour.

Even worse than a slow response is no response. According to a report by Sprout Social, the brands they monitor reply to just 11 percent of social media messages from customers.

Resources

It’s time for social media to be treated as a mature customer care channel. Fortunately, there are now several resources to help you.

One is a new book by social media expert Dan Gingiss, called Winning at Social Customer Care. It provides step-by-step guidance for setting up and running a team to manage this important channel.

Another option is my training video, How to Serve Customers Via Social Media. Like Gingiss’s book, it gives you step-by-step instructions for serving your customers on a wide variety of social media channels.

You’ll need a Lynda.com subscription to view the video, but you can get a 10-day trial. LinkedIn Premium subscribers can also access the course on LinkedIn Learning.

The post Three Social Media Trends in Customer Care appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Here’s What’s New In Social Media Customer Service

kiaadmin — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The following post is a guest blog from Jeff Toister, Author, Consultant and Trainer at Toister Performance Solutions. Click here to view the original post.

Social media is still an immature customer service channel.

That’s apparent when reading the latest Customer Experience Benchmark report from Execs In The Know and COPC, Inc. This report is the 2015 Corporate Edition and was published in 2016.

I previously analyzed their 2013 report and their 2014 report and came to the same conclusion each year. Most companies still don’t get social media as a customer service channel.

Six years ago, I did my own tiny social media study. That’s back when the Starbucks Twitter profile said that some guy named Brad did the tweeting. Things are pretty much the same as even back then. (Except for Brad. I’m not sure what happened to him.)

In this year’s report, I did see a glimmer of hope that more companies are starting to catch on. Social media customer service is still far from maturity, but it might be entering it’s adolescent years.

Below are three of the more interesting trends revealed in the report. You can also purchase the full report from Execs In The Know. It’s full of intriguing insights on social media plus more traditional channels (phone, email, etc.) and emerging channels like self-service and chat.

Trend #1: Ownership

More customer service teams are getting involved, and they’re getting more resources to do it. It still isn’t great. Here’s the breakdown of who owns the social media function:

Customer service has sole or joint ownership of social media in 54 percent of companies surveyed. That’s up from 50 percent last year.

The percentage of companies that give their social media agents training is also up, though not quite as high as it was in 2013.

Side note:

What the heck are companies doing that aren’t training their employees?! I can just see those managers now.

“Hey Kayla. You’re a millennial, right?! Don’t all you millennials get social media and stuff? Well, you’re in charge now.”

I digress.

The other good news is that 60 percent of companies surveyed expected their budget to increase. Only 27 percent of companies surveyed last year planned to increase their budget.

Trend #2: New Channels

Twitter and Facebook remain the big dogs when it comes to social media customer service.

There are other sites like Pintrest, Instagram, and LinkedIn that have millions of users but haven’t really caught on for customer service.

However, there are a few alternative social media channels that are increasing. The chart below compares each channel’s share of social media engagements in 2015 vs 2014.

Here, it’s helpful to remind ourselves what constitutes social media. This is the definition from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)

What types of sites are in these three growing categories?

Forums include online support communities like this Apple site.
Review site examples include Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google My Business.
Blogs posts can engage customers too, like this sample post from Alaska Airlines.

So, the real trick for companies is figuring out where their customers are trying to interact with them and then establishing a service presence in those channels.

Trend #3: Maturity Is Still Low

If something stays the same, does that constitute a trend?

I’m going to say yes. It’s important to acknowledge that many companies are struggling to serve their customers via social media.

Just 20 percent of survey respondents felt their social media customer service was mature or very mature.

This is going to pose a problem for two reasons. First, social media volume is increasing. The survey found that social media volume increased in 77 percent of companies.

Second, companies are struggling to keep up with this volume. I examined this 2015 multichannel study from Eptica to learn about social media response rates.

Here’s how the top 500 U.S. retailers fared via Twitter, Facebook, and email:

Yikes! Do these brands hate their customers?

Seriously, brands. I say this with sincerity and affection: If you aren’t going to respond to your customers on social media (or email?!) then shut down your account.

It’s social + media. Not media. Sheesh.

Here, I suspect companies are lying to themselves. They think they are awesome when they’re not. (I recently wrote about overconfidence causing service failures.)

There are three data points that support this assertion.

First, the Customer Experience Benchmark found that improving the quality of care was a top priority for contact centers for the second year in a row.

Second, the report also found that 79 percent of companies think they’re meeting the needs of their customers, but only 33 percent of customers surveyed agree.

Finally, there’s Gartner’s famous stat that 89 percent of companies expect customer experience to be their primary basis for competition in 2016.

It’s hard to believe we’re entering a new age of customer service awesome if companies aren’t even responding to basic inquiries. Maybe that’s why retail customer satisfaction continues to drop.

One Last Trend

There’s one last trend that I think explains a lot.

Take a look at Domo’s 2015 Social CEO Report. They looked at Fortune 500 CEOs to see which ones had a presence on social media.

Their sad finding is 61 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on social media. It’s hard to believe that social media will get the attention it deserves if CEOs don’t understand it.

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