The Spark: Stop overcomplicating employee engagement
At Solid Form, the spark started as a question around employee engagement, kindling a flame under a team that craved more robust and creative projects.
We've been told that the most important business tenant to emerge from social media is that "customer service is the new proactive marketing."
Indeed, social media - be it blogging, tweeting, Facebooking or photo sharing - has given businesses a direct conduit to customers. Instead of traditional marketing, where businesses talk at their customers, social media has created interactive marketing, where brands and business can directly communicate with consumers on a granular level.
But the most exciting element of this granularity is not the ability to shout in your customers' ears. In fact, it's the polar opposite. It's the ability to listen. Businesses need to be ready to respond to their customers voices on social media as quickly as they would to an email or, if you're really good, to a ringing telephone. In short, social media needs to be a part of your customer service strategy as well as your marketing strategy.
Last year, social media analytics specialists Simply Measured tracked the customer service performance of 30 top brands with dedicated customer service Twitter accounts. The results are illuminating:
The study also showed that 42 percent of social media users expect to receive a customer support response within an hour. Clearly there is substantial room for improvement in social media customer service, and where there is room for improvement there is opportunity.
Now is the time to set up your business as a leader in the field of social media customer service. Here are 4 steps to take to help make that happen:
To do the last two steps well, you need to set up a comprehensive media monitoring solution - one that not only monitors social media but also the web as a whole. While the sheer volume of such "solutions" currently available is slightly mind-numbing, here are two essentials:
Customer service is an essential tenant of a successful business that, with today's focus on technology, has been in serious danger of relegation (no one likes phone trees). Social media offers a new way to create the best customer experience possible.
How do you plan integrate social media into your customer's experience?
Christopher Wallace is Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Amsterdam Printing, one of the nation's largest providers of promotional products for businesses large and small. Amsterdam specializes in pens and other promotional items. Christopher regularly contributes to the Small Business Know-How blog.
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