Creating a Social Media Customer Service Experience

When organizations create social media accounts, they are entering into a virtual (albeit implied) contract with their communities. That contract is simple, promising:

• Not to waste the customer’s time, and always add value
• To enable an open, visible dialogue in which the customer has a voice
• That someone will always be on the other side to respond (or, where appropriate, maybe not respond, but at least monitor).

If any of the above three items are missing, then it’s likely that social is being used as a vehicle for another function (advertising, e-mail marketing, focus groups, etc.). This may not be intentional—many have applied traditional marketing tactics to the technology without fully understanding social media and how it is used to consume information. Social media works through interaction and an openness to communicate in a way that always benefits the user first.

What does it look like when this doesn’t happen? Let me give a personal example. On a Sunday afternoon recently, I repeatedly tried to check in online for a long-haul flight, without success. There was no explanation for this error on the site, and I didn’t want to make the 90-minute drive to the airport to find there was an issue. Calling the airline’s customer service number was hopeless: I went through several prompts before being disconnected; the second time, a recording indicated that the wait time was more than an hour.

Since I needed information quickly, I realized that social media was probably my best bet. I visited their Facebook page, but the commenting function was disabled on its wall. The page was used only for broadcasting information, such as the latest sales promotion. You could comment on these posts, but chances are your comment would be missed, especially if it was unrelated. This felt really one-sided and not customer-friendly.

Finally, I moved on to Twitter. I sent off four Tweets to the airline, explaining the difficulty I’d experienced and requesting information. No one ever responded to my Tweets, not even the following day, during business hours.

The end result was a breakdown in the implied social media customer service contract. I didn’t feel like I had a voice, and no one was there to answer me when I did find an outlet on Twitter. I definitely felt as though my time was wasted.

As marketing professionals, how do you approach social media? Do you have a social customer service plan in place? How well do you hold up your end of the social contract?

A version of this blog post was originally published on MeetingsNet.com.