Tag Archives: management

Are you using Social Support as a preference channel or a business crutch?

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Low cost, quick to market and a platform for engagement: of all the ways social media has impacted the way we do business, social support is perhaps the most direct and accepted business use. But social support has a flip side — for many brands it’s become a way to address the connected customer while legacy support systems, long wait times and product defects go unresolved — social support has become a crutch.

I’ve been there before myself, several times. Between acquisitions, periods of rapid growth, outsourcing of departments and a myriad of other challenges, we saw social support as the way to quickly address a bad stigma about the brand’s service, long queue times and public critique over support. But while social support provided an apparent short term fix, the truth was we were making a long term mistake and conditioning our customers to turn to the wrong venue, a very public venue, to solve something which they asked us to, and we should have been able to, solve elsewhere.

When social support is “better”, that obviously means everything else is worse

Connected as consumers are, not everyone starts with twitter or Facebook and just as you don’t want to force a customer to pick email over the phone or the phone over an in store rep, forcing a customer to use a social channel, whether it’s directed or just the only place they find an answer in a timely manner, starts the whole conversation off on a negative foot.

At the same time you can bet that by the time they show up on your social support channel, they’ve already ranted about you… They’re coming in hot and the solution is no longer to give them a great experience, it’s to make up for a bad one.

Tainted, an engagement channel becomes a support stop

Every reply is an @ that shows up when someone loads your twitter account. Every Facebook, Blog or Foursquare comment remains front and center for the world to see hundreds, thousands of times in a single day. When you have a branded channel taking a barrage of help questions, when team leads or executives are becoming primary contact points, you’ve got a major miss that dilutes your ability to use social to engage, promote and build with your customers.

Customer service is marketing these days and a failure to any one offering leads to rants, complaints and a very public problem that is easily avoided by taking the same investment approach you’ve put into social support and spreading the ‘love’ around.

An offline customer is just as potent as an online

Often social support programs deliver higher service and better “gives” as company perceive that the visibility warrants a serious fix. While customers sure appreciate the extra gives, it’s a mistake to think that the most potent voice is the one coming to twitter. After all, what story is really going to get passed around… The airport customer bounced around by the front desk and phone support while stranded at the airport or the guy tweeting. Anyone has the potential to take a negative viral and everyone shares bad experiences. Channel is not the qualifier.

Adding to this, customers are increasingly connected so if you let a policy, or five, slip on Facebook posts, you can bet people will circumvent other channels and go right to you there… Good for your stats, bad for the business (or a potential flag that those policies need to evolve quick). Don’t be gamed.

Build great support with a social option

That’s not to say you shouldn’t use social for support — social can be a great support system but it has to be a preference channel and a part of a larger, working system where the customer can have a good experience via phone, email or in store as well. and it has to be done right as an opportunity for those who chose to use it.

Ideas like individual support reps help avoid flooding your channels with support mentions; peer to peer communities allow for scale while bringing credibility to concerns over product or quality; multi channel support crm makes a continuous, and highly personal experience but most of all, the customer expects the same great response in any other channel.

Your employees are your brand, so why are you blocking them from social media sites?

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As social has grown become the top activity online, it’s not surprising that employers have started banning the use of sites by retail, support and genera employees. And that’s mistake.

Expertise in what the brand really stands for: employees know best

While corporate builds the brand strategy and sets a marketing tone, the truth is that all the store visits and surveys in the world don’t put us in the driver seat with the customer. Retail associates, shipping teams, customer support are already the face of your brand to your customers and the true experts on the pulse of the business. From a practical, when it comes to reaching people in a meaningful way, perspective your employees are your best assets as they live and breathe the true brand every day.

Expertise in how to use social: It’s a usage curve, not a training one.

One can say that only so-called experts should be putting messages out the public but let’s face it, social is new… evolving every day and is used by just about everyone so the learning curve to participating on a useful level is unlike any tactic before. Sure you have to figure out CoTweet, Buddy Media or a similar tool, learn the goals of a social campaign and the reason for authenticity but really it comes down to thinking like a customer, being willing to look at the brand from a new vantage point and not just as a marketer: then you can make an impact.

Guidance required: Setting the right tone

This does not mean giving free reign, doing that invites arguing, insider information, and a host of other problems but with logical guidance, rather than walls, programs like Twelpforce from BestBuy have shown, leveraging the mass employee base scales far better than any corporate managed program can.

Not just employees who contribute officially: Involvement is every mention

But of course not every employee is going to be out there advocating the brand on social channels in an attempt to become the next social media manager. Even then, there are three reasons why you should continue to let everyone log on, access farmville and tweet about their weekend plans.

First you have the opportunity of each person’s network — networking in the 21st century is as much about Facebook posts and +1s as it is sales events or conferences and every employee comes to you with a unique group to influence on many levels.  You see this when employees, far outside of marketing, talk about their great corporate culture, the latest products or even defend their brand. Within their influence circle, each employee becomes the voice of their brand. Take away access and you silence their ability, and desire to support.

Second you have information. Whether it’s an earthquake or a business trend, social is the fastest tool out there. It’s why we can stun our executive teams with the speed in which we discover relevant case studies or consumer insights and the same is true across the organization. With training rather than filtering, employees can tap in to this to understand what the brand is doing, their contacts at agencies, partner providers, even local competitors.

And there’s a danger to limits: Your own social backlash

Then there’s practical side. Block Facebook and Twitter online and people will turn to their phones. Block their phones and they miss out on what’s happening in their personal life. That breeds resentment which at best hurts your retention time (hi HR) and at worst leads to a lot of bad commentary on glass door and all over the social we as people get home and log back on. People are social beings so just as you don’t stop employees from a quick chat at the water cooler or a smoking break, you shouldn’t be slapping their hands to keep them off of social.

Open up and educate to benefit.

Whether it’s leveraging motivated employees to provide a face to the brand, influencing friend circles or simply giving employees enough respect to check in now and then, there’s great opportunity in opening up social to your entire organization and focusing on educating and training rather than limiting and penalizing.

If productivity stinks, Facebook is merely today’s outlet for free time, and a ban will not fix the problem anymore than removing the free water cooler.

Solid execution: Delta gets smacked by soldier’s viral video, responds & changes policy in hours

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So it’s only been a few hours since my post on Delta Airlines snafu with a group of soldier’s over baggage fees which turned into a viral / pr crises in just a few hours. Not only is the issue all over Twitter, Facebook and news sites but the video from the soldier’s has passed 200,000 views at last count.

So while my first post was really about empowering your ground-level employees to avoid bad customer experiences, whether they go viral or not, Delta has turned this into a great example of how you should handle social incidents.

While nothing can erase the negative impact this will leave, Delta’s social [and business] teams have been on their toes and acting quick to avoid making this into a “United Airlines Breaks Guitar” hit. Sure the PR will continue against them, more articles will come, it won’t be good but for an organization of this site and legacy, they’re playing their cards well. Let’s take a look…

  1. Yesterday a video was posted about an issue costing 38 soldiers $2800 in fees. As quick as the video became shared, Delta was in the mix with a response from “Rachel” apologizing & reaffirming the policy just before midnight EST.
  2. This morning Delta wakes up to see it’s full-blown-viral with major social network and media coverage creating over 200,000 YouTube views.
  3. By 1pm EST Rachel has an updated post with an updated policy: 4 checked bags for military traveling in economy on orders. The post reaffirms Delta’s involvement & programs for the military. And Rachel also threw in a personal statement as an Army wife and 12 year employee of Delta.

It’s been less than 24 hours and Delta has out two blog posts, has changed a world-wide policy and has allowed a personal message to float into the middle of it.

Like I said, this won’t end the problem and frankly, adjusting one policy does not fix the underlying issue where the system often prevents employee from making the “right” decision but Delta has taken a strong step to mitigating the issue and, more importantly, having a voice in the spread of it every step of the way.

By moving quickly blogs, tweets, mainstream media are all adjusting their story to mention Delta’s response and changes while the story is hot. As hard as it is, this is critical and very well executed by Delta… The longer you wait, the colder the issue and the less your response is seen so, from a social crises management perspective, kudos to their social team for being on top of the video, their business for being flexible enough to run and make a decision when one needed to be made — even if it’s just one gesture it’s a big one at the right time.

For more thoughts on crises communication management in a social world, check out my previous post about the Urban Outfitters social media incident.