Why You May Be Losing Customers and Don’t Know It

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Clik here to view.Customers do not communicate with businesses the same way they did 10 years ago. If a customer has a problem, complaint or happy story to share, they typically will not call nor will they go to the store and fill out a comment card. Oh no… they turn to Internet. They turn to social media.

Social media has become the go-to place for interacting with companies – even if the companies are not aware of the interaction. You see…

• Consumers do not care if you are active on social media – they expect you to be there.
• Consumers do not care if you actively monitor for comments toward your brand. They will post about you – sometimes not on your profile – and expect you to find it.

While much of this doesn’t seem fair for a brand, it’s beyond your control. In fact, consumers expect even more than your presence and your response. They expect your response to come very quickly – 53% of Twitter users expect a response in less than 1 hour – and they expect you to take meaningful steps to acknowledge and solve their issue. If you want the real kicker… that percentage jumps to 72% when the comment is a complaint.

Not living up to these expectations, or not properly solving an issue can lead to negative consequences: bitter feelings toward the brand, and consumers taking action by complaining through other channels with the intent to damage your reputation.

If you happen to have an effective online customer service system in place, and do respond quickly and in a reasonable manner, it only benefits your company. Customers with a positive online complaint experience are likely to return and buy more from you (34%), will recommend your brand (43%) and will praise you on social media channels (42%).

Doing social media customer service right can be time consuming and can require a decent amount of resources up front. But once a plan is in place and running, and a person or team is designated to own it, it should be smooth sailing.

While there are many components to social media customer service, here are 4 vital things you must do:

• Respond promptly: As previously mentioned, consumers are incredibly impatient when waiting for a company to respond online. Try to answer a complaint within an hour of it being posted. Do not let a post go more than 24 hours without a response. Not answering in a timely manner will only anger a customer even more, and may prompt them to continue complaining.
• Be courteous: No matter how rude and unreasonable a person may be, you need to take a deep breath and be polite. Remember, when you are interacting on social media, you have a very broad public audience watching. Not treating a customer respectfully can lead to trouble.
• Be personal: Answer a person’s complaint by addressing their actual issue. Do not give a canned, generic response. It’s unhelpful to consumers, and they will quickly catch on to the non-personal nature. To avoid this, a company needs to have a program in place that provides social media employees the tools necessary to solve customer problems. Plus, the faster a complaint is resolved, the happier the person will be and the more likely they will be a return customer.
• Be prepared to take the conversation offline, appropriately: Often it will be easier to get more details from a customer and really solve their issue if you speak with them directly. This is perfectly acceptable to do if you publicly comment on the post and acknowledge the complaint, and then request that the individual direct message you their email address or phone number so you can follow up personally. It is not okay to acknowledge a complaint and then ask them to take it to a different social network or tell them to call customer service – consumers always know they can call, there’s a reason they chose not to. For example, the image below shows a company providing an unhelpful response that instructs consumers to call customer service. A better approach would be to ask for the consumer to direct message them and then personally reach out to solve the issue.Image may be NSFW.
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Beyond these core components, here are a few tips for conducting social media customer service:

• Set up notifications and alerts so that every time someone mentions your brand online (Google Alert) or directly messages you on Facebook or Twitter, you get an email or text message.
• Monitor common product review sites for comments or complaints. Social media is typically a consumer’s go-to platform, but it is not the only choice available.
• Be proactive. Choose where you want to receive customer feedback and complaints and publicize it. If you monitor Facebook often, you could encourage consumers to reach out to you there. It doesn’t mean people will always catch on and go to that platform, but you have a good chance of directing some people there.
• Do not ask or discuss personal information with customers on a public forum. If you need this type of information, always ask them to direct message it to you.

Social customer service is a very big part of the business world today. If you are not engaging your online customers when they have an issue, you are losing them and very likely losing anyone else that has visibility into their complaint.

Leapfrog pays a lot of attention to their consumers and they personally reach out when a complaint about a product is posted. They acknowledge the issue and provide a course of action to remedy it (note: while you should never direct someone off a social media channel, you may need to if responding on a review site).

Amazon review:

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Points to note here:

• This is an Amazon review, not an outright complaint to the company. This means Leapfrog is actively monitoring channels searching for consumers that have problems or share a negative experience, then they proactively reach out to them.
• The Leapfrog rep is very informed about the product and is able to give a detailed response that directly addresses the issue stated. The response by Leapfrog would have been meaningless (impersonal and possibly taken negatively) if they had just said “sorry to hear about the issue, please call support at ….”
• While this is a great response, it would have been better if there was a way for the consumer to contact the person that left the reply (they already know the history). But nonetheless, they now have assurance they can get their issue resolved.

Customer service through social media (often called social care) is not a fad or phase; it is here to stay. Many companies have jumped on board and have done a wonderful job setting up a proper response program; however, many companies are lagging behind, and will eventually be penalized for it. If you do not have a social care program in place, now is the time to start.

*All stats: http://www.lithium.com/company/news-room/press-releases/2013/consumers-will-punish-brands-that-fail-to-respond-on-twitter-quickly