Nowadays consumers have more choice than ever before and their expectations are higher than ever. Most of us agree that customer is king. However, when we consider the poor levels of customer service that we encounter on a daily basis, as consumers, many of us are left wondering whether many businesses subscribe to this mantra.
Organisations that introduce an exceptional level of customer service are differentiating themselves from the competition in an increasingly saturated marketplace. Which is why it is so surprising that many businesses are still failing to address the issue of customer service.
With such a diversity of channels to interact with customers, many suppliers are still missing a trick. It’s a dangerous game, particularly as the majority of dissatisfied customers won’t bother to complain, they will simply change their suppliers.
Technological advances continue to transform consumer attitudes and behaviour. Consumers are increasingly demanding and their expectations are increasingly higher. Technology exists to make our life easier and it’s heightened our expectations regarding waiting times. Consumers no longer believe it is up to them to invest their time and effort trying to communicate with customer services. Instead, they expect the customer service departments to proactively solve any queries or problems they may have, as a matter of utmost urgency.
Social media exemplifies this (r)evolution in customer services; empowering consumers further, however, could it not also give greater power customer service departments as well? .
Two-way communication with customers is vital in order for companies to understand and, therefore, be able to effectively meet their customers’ needs. Offering customers variety and a choice of channels including social media platforms to communicate by is a fundamental part of giving good service.
And the trend is likely to continue, in particular, due to advances in technology which in turn increases accessibility of consumers.
“Compared to only three years ago, when Yahoo! and Google attracted 95% of Internet users, today online destinations are broken into three, equal-size categories: Yahoo!/Google, YouTube, and social media channels. This is an indication of the role social media is playing in today’s world,” says Alex Dayon executive vice president service cloud product management at salesforce.com
A recent report produced by Morgan Stanley earlier this year illustrated that both in terms of number of users and time spent, social media has already surpassed email. Meanwhile, the same report projects that over the next five years the number of mobile users will surpass that of desktop Internet users.
“An informal live survey we conducted during a recent industry event showed that currently most brands rely on email (68%) and phone (66%) to attend to their costumer service needs. Self-service, social networks and online forums followed with 24%, 21% and 14% respectively,” commented Dayon.
He continues: “When asked what they thought would be the most important channels used in the future, results underline the transformation of the customer service space. At 57% the self-service channel dethroned email (50%) and phone (56%), while both social networks and online forums also gained in relevance.”
The transformation is affecting all industry sectors alike with perhaps a difference between B2C and the B2B models. While both models have the same collaboration needs, they differ when it comes to the issue of data security.
In the case of B2C, the availability of the information exchanged (determining the problem and resolving it) can be referenced by other consumers and succeed in deflecting the volume of queries received by customer service providers. In the case of B2B –including financial services sector – however, the issues surrounding the security of data transfer have prevented a more innovative use of social media.
“As a result of this evolution, brands are being projected into a world where conversations about their products are happening. From a customer service angle, a brand’s choice is whether to engage consumers by creating profiles in forums already in place or to create such spaces and drive traffic there.
“In the case of the latter, customer service can be initially provided by a community on a peer-to-peer basis –like Cisco has done – deflecting a significant volume of queries away from customer services.
“Alternatively, the brand may choose to create closed social networks allowing them to proactively engage the community as done by UK fashion retailer New Look,” noted Katie Streten, head of digital strategy at Imagination.
An example of this is what both Dayon and Streten have been highlighting can be illustrated with a recent example from the South African Tourism Board. In order to cope with the 300,000 plus visitors expected during the World Cup, the agency needed a channel that would be set up in a short period of time and reach a maximum of (potential) visitors.
The South African Tourism Board opted for Service Cloud 2 and within weeks it was live on multiple channels—phone, email, Web self-service, Twitter, and Facebook.
With its @GoToSouthAfrica account, the South African Tourism Board created a channel for visitors to tweet questions. Agents answer the questions and all of @GoToSouthAfrica followers gained access to the queries and responses. The strategy also comprised a smartphone application – necessary in a country where internet is not as widely accessible to the population as mobile phone access.
Prior to the Service Cloud 2 deployment, the South African Tourism Board managed customer service using an in-house system based on Excel. South African Tourism recognised that it needed a contact center solution to support the immense scale of the event and meet the modern travel needs of visitors.
Enterprise cloud computing was particularly attractive to South African Tourism because it enabled the organisation to rapidly ramp up for the games and provide the flexibility needed to ramp down after the tournament without the ongoing burden of costly software, hardware and infrastructure maintenance.
The world is moving from a paradigm where consumers seek out information to one where information is ‘fed’ to the consumer based on his/her established preferences.
“When it comes to using social media as a customer service tool, providers must listen to their customers and learn about their preferences and preferred methods for communicating. Then it is necessary that the channel’s alignment with the brand is clear so that the objectives of the strategy are met. Finally, the approach needs to be fully integrated into the brand’s internal systems,” concluded Streten.
Organisations ignoring social media as an effective multi-channel communication tool do so at their own peril. Not only are they alienating themselves from a growing customer market segment, they are also potentially forgoing significant cost-savings that social media offers over traditional forms of communication.
