As many companies have learned the hard way, unanswered complaints on social networks can go viral, causing real damage to a company’s brand. Take a look at these numbers: Twitter is averaging 250 million tweets per day, Facebook has grown to over 900 million active users. In other words, for every five minutes spent online, one of those minutes is spent only on social media sites.
Traditional advertising is losing trust while social media interaction and peer recommendations are gaining momentum. Only 14% of consumers trust advertisements but 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Consumers who use social media will tell an average of 53 others about a negative service experience. No wonder the social network boom has created a new revolution in customer service. The reach and immediacy of Twitter, Facebook and Google+ has made the voice of the customer an extremely powerful one and bad customer experiences can quickly snowball into online customer uprisings leading to PR disasters.
Remember how Air France simply crashed on social media with just one blog post about a travel chaos and a dash of perceived discrimination?
For those who don’t recall the incident, this is what happened: An annoyed Jay Shah wrote an open letter to the chairman and CEO of Air France sharing his travel woes with the airline. The blog went viral earning Air France the much-unneeded negative public reaction. More than two million people viewed the letter, thousands shared it on Twitter and Facebook.
Air France’s reputation was taking a pummelling and the brand was crashing which is when the management opted for some serious damage control by not only compensating the disgruntled passenger but also bringing about significant changes in how the company dispenses customer service.
The infographic below highlight’s this very lesson: You can no longer ignore social media as at least one million people view customer service related tweets every week of which 80 percent are negative in nature. Customers prefer engaging with brands which has served them well in the past and has entertained all their queries without much of First reply time delay.
For instance, Starbucks uses Twitter to not only answer customer questions all the time, but it also tweets discounts and schemes to followers on a regular basis. It works on engaging a dialogue, and considers social media as a relationship, rather than a one-way promotion.
A Maritz research shows response time expectations can be a game changer for a business since at least 48% of online consumers are praising a company for outstanding service as against the 43 percent that are venting out their poor experience. In short: keep your customer satisfied on social media and you shall be rewarded. According to the infographic, 94 percent of consumers frequently share good service experience with others. Moreover, 59 percent of consumers would switch brands for better service while 50 percent customers give businesses only a week to respond to an issue before dropping it.
So as customers increasingly turn to social media sites for better user customer service, the social help desk lets you respond in real-time to meet the evolving customer definition of now.
Designed by Beckon Media Inc. partnership with www.desk.com
