An all-new Twitter Chat will share learning and advice from five high profile organisations skilled in delivering effective social customer services. Get it in your diary now.
by Darren Caveney
The growth of social media as a customer services channel shows no sign of slowing down. But many organisations have struggled to keep pace and properly embed social into their formal customer services offer.
Let’s use local government as a case study. Recent research by SocialSignIn and comms2point0 revealed that in local government social media enquiries have grown by 78% in the past 12 months. Yet 93% of the 60 councils surveyed said they had not embedded social media into customer services as they had with other channels, such as email, telephone calls and face to face enquiries.
There are many potential issues and impacts here for organisations in all sectors here. But let’s focus on two:
1. Comms teams are too busy to be doing a customer services job
We know that many comms teams have reduced in size over the past five years yet demand for their services has increased. Teams have never been busier than they are right now. Social media has become more and more influential as a platform during this time not least with customers seeking and expecting quick answers to their questions.
From the social media reviews I have undertaken at 16 organisations I have discovered that around a half of the incoming messages to organisations are actually customer services enquiries. Anecdotally this trend is backed up by comms in other organisations.
So if you haven’t nailed this yet it’s time to get together with your customer services colleagues to explore your options. The latest social media management platforms can be embedded into most customer relations management solutions. So that’s one previously large barrier overcome.
2. Customer services are the best people to do customer services
OK, so that wins me the award of stating the blooming obvious. But you might be surprised how much customer services work communications teams are actually doing here, acting like a middle party going around the houses to get information they don’t have instant access to.
Who does social customer services well and what are the lessons?
Good questions. And the truth is most of us don’t have all of the answers. Yet.
But a new Twitter Chat featuring five high profile organisations skilled in this area has been organised just for you. It’s a free and rich learning opportunity so don’t miss it.
We’ve teamed up with SocialSignIn once more to bring you a rather impressive panel who will answer your questions, tackle your barriers and generally lift the lid on their social customer services learning.
I’m chuffed to be able to announce that our panel features…
- Virgin Trains
- The Open University
- Iceland Foods
- South Lanarkshire Council
- SocialSignIn
Big thanks to Stuart Banbery at SocialSignIn for making this one happen.
So put this in your diary now and keep following the hashtag #BeSocial17 for updates.
We’ll see you on Twitter on 29 June from 12.30pm.
Because who doesn’t want happy customers? :-)
Darren Caveney is creator of comms2point0 and owner of creative communicators ltd
image via Tullo Saba
