The Role of Social Media in Simple Terms

Wind the clock way, way back. Look at retailing before telephones and radios. Customer service was a personal experience that happened at the place of business. Want to visit with other customers, visit with your neighbors as the smaller towns all supported the local merchants and the merchants generally listened or went out of business. Wind the clock forward and retailers are on a steady path to greater and greater levels of isolation with their customers. Most retailers today have no real "forum" for customers to share ideas or unique experiences with each other much less share these ideas with the vendors/retailers.

That's the basis for social media in the business world. Creation and fostering of a community of customers and company representatives that allow for a free flowing dialog of ideas, feedback and sadly, problems. The problems need to be quickly addressed so as not to sour the balance of the conversations. The best thing is to create a sidebar conversation of some sort to resolve the issue and then publish to all that the issue was successfully resolved. Never leave a posted complaint without a notice of resolution.

This model puts the responsibility for social media in the hands of Marketing/Sales with problem resolution the responsibility of Customer Service. Don't mix these 2 together. Marketing needs to focus on growing the loyalty of the customer base. Customer Service needs to address the problems.

In fact, in a well run Customer Service model, customers are advised to use designated support channels when they have a problem and not rely on Twitter or Facebook for answers. On-line support forums are not the same as "social media" per se but are a great place to allow customers to help each other provided they are properly moderated. Do not mix these forums with other social media channels.

Those companies that have complaints and problems being reported on their social media sites on a regular basis have a failed Customer Service system. It's no more complicated than that.

Remember the old adage, "Praise in public, reprimand in private." This applies to social media as well.

If you would like help defining and deploying an effective Social Media strategy alongside your Customer Service system, CEP, Inc. can help. Please contact us for a free evaluation of your existing systems.

The Role of Social Media - The Cold, Hard Truth

Social media must be about letting the customer meet the "company" and other customers in order to develop a sense of community. People like to share and like knowing there are others who also acquired the product. Encouraging others to "spread the word" is what the purpose of Social Media ought to be and that supports a larger branding mission if done well.

The idea that FB, YouTube & Twitter ought to be a primary means of customer support is just plain wrong. No one needs to create the next Dave Carroll through poor service.

If there is a fire in a bedroom of your house, don't build another bedroom as a solution. Put out the fire! Same rule applies to customer service.

Social Media: Is a Dangerous Pattern Emerging?

A friend of mine recently had a problem with her American Express card. She had an issue with a late fee, called the 800 number, was told that the charge was valid and though there were many years of great purchase and payment history, the late fee would not be waived. My friend cancelled her AMEX card and posted a short version of the incident on Twitter.

Not surprisingly, American Express reached out to her as they are an avid user of Twitter search technology. The Social Media representative waived the late fee and recovered the credit card account.

So what has American Express, like hundreds of other companies, now accomplished? Sure they saved an account and made a customer happy. That’s the obvious answer. Look a little more closely and the answer is not so pretty.

AMEX had an opportunity to resolve the issue on the first phone call but the agent either did not feel the situation warranted a waiver, was not authorized to issue a waiver or was otherwise motivated to deny the issuance of the late fee waiver. As soon as the situation hits Twitter, the game changes and now it is acceptable to waive the late fee as the issue has gone public.

What AMEX has done is reinforce a behavior within its customer base that complaining on Twitter is the way to get a desired outcome – forget a private phone conversation. It is as if AMEX has decided that in order to keep their revenues high, they will not waive various penalty fees unless the problem goes public.

This is a moronic application of social media. Social media ought to be an avenue of building a community of users who share stories of the great things a company did for them and how the company is responsive; you know, the nice news about a company. What AMEX is creating is a “gripe board” where customers will learn to seek resolution rather than picking up a phone.

What company, in their right mind, wants to be training customers to gripe in public whenever they have a problem rather than call someone for a private conversation? The Twitter gripe is widely public. The black eye is done. The resolution may never be published and the readers of the gripe may never see the positive outcome but I bet they will remember that a loyal customer griped that loyalty was not rewarded.

I cannot offer statistics other than anecdotes such as this but the more I read about social media and the efforts to sell companies on social media as a front-line customer service tool, I cannot help but wonder how many companies are racing to be “with it” when it comes to being “social” and forgetting what it is they really need to be doing. Encouraging customers to gripe to the world in order to secure an acceptable resolution to a problem is just a bad idea. In fact, it’s worse than bad. It may well be terminal for a fledgling company.

AMEX is probably not worried. In fact, AMEX paid customers to go away during the mortgage meltdown. Clearly, thinning the ranks of card holders is part of their overall business strategy. For the rest of the business world, I suggest an examination of the social media strategy is in order.

Social media should be used as a marketing tool. That’s it. Build a community. Let customers share stories. Encourage interaction through coupons, contests and games. That’s what social media is intended to be.

Contact centers are where customer support happens. The interactions are private and the rules of engagement should be the same regardless of whether someone calls, writes (yes, some of us still write letters), e-mail or posts on a social site. The objective is to resolve the issue quickly and fairly such that publishing an account of the situation and the resolution does no damage to the reputation of either party and does not encourage customers to seek a public forum as a first point of contact.

Mistakes will happen and customers will post gripes on social sites. The point is to not encourage the posting of gripes on social sites as a primary means of obtaining customer satisfaction.

Back to my friend’s situation. Had the initial AMEX rep applied the same rules regarding fee waivers, the Twitter gripe would never have been posted. AMEX would not have had to spend additional time and money to “negate” the gripe posting and an untold number of people would not have read about AMEX’s failure to forgive a late fee for a long time customer.

Social media cost AMEX money in this situation. Is social media costing your company money?

I’d like to hear your stories about how companies are “encouraging” you to utilize social media. Feel free to post your stories and I will publish them all.

Why All the Fuss About Social Media?

Social Media is quite the rage these days. I must be seeing at least 2-3 webinars per week on the subject from various companies and vendors talking about how Social Media is impacting our lives, our customers’ lives and the world around us. In many cases, borderline panic is the underlying message.


What is Social Media really and is it deserving of this much attention? Is there really a need to panic? What is it about Social Media that really needs to be understood? All good questions and each deserving an answer.


Let’s start with the basics. Social Media refers to a large and growing number of web sites offering a means of electronically sharing ideas, photos, videos and just about anything else imaginable. Some sites allow users to control who can view posted content and others have unrestricted access to all content. Some sites are focused on specific purposes such as restaurant reviews or communicating with friends while other sites are simply a location to upload photos and videos to be shared with the world. Underlying all of these sites is the near-universal connectivity of the Internet.


So how do these sites have an impact on the world of business? Opinions. Millions of opinions. Opinions on just about every topic imaginable. Some opinions are sound and others are not. Some ideas are well researched and others are not. All the ideas constitute something that at one time was considered important enough for someone to take the time to post to a site. If that opinion involves your company, the potential for impact, negative and positive, is present. Therein lies the quandary surrounding Social Media; are the opinions worthy of concern or worthy of encouragement or maybe not worthy of anything?


In the distant past, customers had a limited reach for influencing the opinions of others. Friends, families and colleagues were possible audiences for the opinions but the impact of any 1 person was rarely a concern. The sharing of a single personal experience rarely made a significant impact on the overall business. After all, how many people could one person reach with their story?


Social Media has changed that equation. The pervasiveness of the Internet, upon which Social Media is built, allows customers to potentially reach million of “friends” in a matter of minutes. A single opinion posted on a Social Media site can have an immediate impact on a company and its existing and potential customers. Social Media has effectively put the world’s largest megaphone in the hands of virtually every customer. How this megaphone is used is what deserves the attention of every business.


The foremost concern of every business is the negative review. While the now-famous “United Breaks Guitars” video series is an extreme example of a customer-voiced opinion, the reason these videos came into existence is the same as the millions of negative reviews being posted on a regular basis; the customer sought service through normal channels and was left unsatisfied.


Yes, it is that simple. Reading a sampling of the negative posts, it is pretty clear that service was sought through normal channels and when not received, the customer vented their frustration on their favorite social media site.


Thus we arrive at a business decision involving 3 choices:

1. Invest in a social media tracking system in order to capture the negative postings and work to resolve the problems.


2. Invest more resources in the existing customer service systems so that no customer fails to receive service in a timely and effective way.


3. Balance the investment in both improving the existing customer service systems and initiating an effort to capture the relevant social media traffic.


The right choice has as much to do with the customer demographics as it does with budgets and personnel resources. The right choice also has to do with how the Marketing department is using Social Media as a tool for generating sales traffic.


Therein lies the 2-edged sword of Social Media. Social media sites can be a great way to help build a loyal following of customers and advocates. Creating a virtual community of customers provides a great opportunity to promote new products, solicit feedback on existing products and desired products as well as encourage customers to become advocates for the products. If the effort to promote also serves as a magnet to attract negative feedback, then this ought to be considered an opportunity.


In fact, I suggest that any company looking to embrace social media solely for the purpose of capturing negative feedback is wasting both time and money. Without the marketing effort working to build a loyal community of customers through various social media channels, the endeavor is certain to fail. Selective participation by vendors on social sites is generally rebuked by the regular participants.


The bottom line to any business regarding social media is to recognize the opportunity to use social media as a marketing channel first and foremost. If your existing customer service delivery channels are not doing the job, fix them. The social media channels may be used as a means for routing unhappy customers to a service resource that can help but should not be considered a primary pillar upon which a customer service delivery systems is built. Adding more moving parts to a broken system does not result in an improved system.


If you would like help developing and deploying an effective Social Media strategy, I am happy to help. Please call me and I will be happy to provide assistance: 602-492-1088.