A few years ago, the idea of using social media for customer care was virtually unknown. Today, more than 70 percent of US companies do it in some form, and nearly a third of the Interbrand 100 have set up dedicated Twitter handles for customer service. Done well, service via social media offers companies a chance to redefine the way customers think and talk about their brands, as players like Comcast, BestBuy and JetBlue have demonstrated.
Not everyone gets it right, however, Take, for example, this “mystery shopper” interaction between an 18-year-old prospective customer and a major bank:
Prospective Customer: I’m turning 18 and want to open up a checking/savings account. What type of documentation do I need to bring?
Bank: Visit ____.com/locator/ to call the local store. They’ll be able to tell you what you need to bring.
Instead of answering the customer’s simple, factual question there and then, the bank is giving him or her the run-around, obviously trying to end the social media interaction as quickly as possible. Such a potentially valuable new customer would be unlikely to receive such poor treatment if he or she called the bank or walked into a branch.
Similar or worse examples abound, with company representatives routinely insisting that customers switch to private conversations—or immediately directing enquirers to their telephone call centers, instead of interacting with them in the channel where they have chosen to engage.
What lies at the root of these surprisingly poor interactions, even at companies with a strong reputation for customer service? The answer very often is that social media channels are assigned to marketing or corporate communications functions. That makes sense when these channels are being used to build the brand, drive loyalty and boost sales. But it can lead to some frustrating experiences when customers have direct service requests.
Marketing functions often lack the resources, experience, expertise or institutional support to handle service issues well, particularly in the face of rapidly rising volumes of requests. They may also feel that conversations with a dissatisfied customer should be conducted away from the public eye, or that customer service issues are “littering” marketing channels like the company’s Facebook page.
Based on our experience, we believe that responsibility for service via social media belongs, like other customer service channels, to operations. Further, companies that do develop a truly effective social media service capability have the potential to reap significant operational benefits from doing so.
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