Social Customer Service: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Agenda• The document will cover some best practices for customer service in social channels and highlight some

good and bad examples of it

• The best practices will cover: • Organisation

• A team approach• Having hours of operation and emergency contacts• Social FAQs• Focused channels and expectations• Centralising Customer Service

• Response• Speed and openness • Tone of voice, Empathy, and brand protection• Be pro-active• Personal touches• Ignoring and deletion

Organisation

Team approacho No one team should completely own social customer service so that there is knowledge on all brand

considerations. However you must be consistent in your answers & responseso Set consumers expectations for feedback by setting working hours. However ensure you continue to monitor on

off-times in case something develops

Good example Bad exampleDuring Christmas 2009, the snow led to some serious disruptions on the Eurostar service, with passengers being stranded on the trains for hours without any information.

Why is it bad? Lack of information on the trains as well as Eurostar’s public relations team gave conflicting information on their social channels (Facebook/Twitter) about the incident. This led to a serious online serious backlash from consumers

YouTube apology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jx5EdCEgT4&feature=player_embedded

During 2009, the snow crippled the transport system closing Gatwick. Without floor staff knowing anything, people turned to Twitter. EasyJet responded within minutes to people 24 hours a day advising them on the latest developments.

Why is it good? Great example of crisis management in advance and being pro-active in a critical situation reacting quickly and stopping problems before they blow out of control

Team approach Good exampleKLM – Ash Cloud; again another great example of crisis management during a critical situation

Having hours of operation and emergency contactso As highlighted in the previous EasyJet example, in certain cases, your customers may need you out of hourso In case of a crisis (e.g. Kingsthorpe incident), Customer Service may be require to work out of hours to deal with

the issueo During holidays (e.g. Christmas), basic monitoring of social properties (Facebook/Twitter) is advised to ensure no

serious issues arise

National Rail East Coast were responding to customers at 1.40 am!

Social FAQso Provide links to or collate your social frequently asked questions so that constant questioning topics can be pre-

answered (just as you would do on site).

Best Buy run the Twitter handle @twelpforce as well as an external website (bbyconnect.appspot.com) which gathers Tweets (also from Best Buy employees), feeds and the Best Buy blog.

Why is it good? The Twelpforce almost works like a dynamic FAQ, updating and changing as fast as technology can move, and hosts itself on bbyfeed.com so people can search for previous Q&As

Good example

Focussed Channels - Orange Helpers• Regardless of what you try to do, people will use whatever site they are most active on to ask questions. In order to manage

expectations and conversations, it is key to define the channels for the users so they know where and how they should interact• Orange have created a sub-brand for their customer service which lives across all social properties. Although linked to from their

main Orange UK accounts, it has its own Facebook and Twitter homes so lives independently. It has two employees specifically dedicated to customer care so consumers get an answer quickly and see the human face of the brand.

• Why is it good? Clearly defined proposition and following• BUT the main OrangeUK pages still gets many customer service queries into their branded channels which doubles the work and

potentially irritates the consumer.

Centralising social customer service

• Thomas Cook both have a Support tab (powered by Get Satisfaction) which allows users to submit ideas, problems, praise or questions that the customer service team respond to; it is separate from the wall, and is completely managed within the app

Why is it a good idea? The app enables their wall to be used for more branded communications and allows them to make a further connection with consumers

Without having to leave Facebook customers can search questions, ask questions and report problems - as well as the all important ‘give praise’ option, highlighting the level of customer care.

Good example

Response

Response speed and openness o In Social Media, speed is key as customers expect you to respond quickly, and issues can quickly escalate. Lack of

responsiveness and clarity could lead to an online backlash

Good exampleIn July 2001, a number of East Coast trains got stuck for a few hours because of an accident which caused major delays. People were tweeting from trains and stations and @NRE_EastCoast promptly replied to every single Tweet

Why is it good? East Coast trains were responding to customers until 2AM in the morning in a friendly and efficient manner

United broke David Carroll's guitar in transit, and made little effort to compensate him. So David Carroll posted a video on YouTube singing about the incident which went viral.

The Times newspaper reported that 4 days after the video’s release, United's stock price dropped 10%, costing stockholders over $180m in value. Today the video is a smash hit and has over 10m views. Customer service fail.

Key Leanings: Respond to customer complaints, quickly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Bad example

Tone of voice, empathy and brand protectiono Social Media gives you an opportunity to give your brand personality and a distinctiveo Listen and engage with your customers, take part in online conversations around trending topics!

Good exampleBen and Jerry’s and Innocent smoothies both have a very friendly and witty tone of voice on Twitter. They frequently engage with their followers, and their followers love them for it!

Why is it good? Social Channels are about connecting with people, not marketing speak

Tone of voice, empathy and brand protectionBad examples

Kenneth Cole jumped in boiling water when they tried to hijack the #Cairo tag associated with the Egyptian Riots.

Lesson: Brands, hash tag hijacking is always a bad idea (see Chris Lake blog post), especially if it has nothing to do with your product. Be careful what you comment on.

Qantas was running a hashtag based on a giveaway promotion during a time where passengers were stranded around the world because a strike, leading to some massive complaints on Twitter insteadWhy is it bad? The promotion timing of the promotion was poor and a blatant attempt to cover up something bad (or previously planned and not cancelled)

Be pro-activeo Social Media allows brands to communicate with their customers like never before, and can be used in

innovative ways as a customer service tool , and to add value to customers

Litt’s Plumbing post Twitpics for their customers when they are installing their machines with actual project updates such as “New dishwasher installed”, “New counters down” and “Installing the backsplash now” so their customers can see the progress whilst they are at work.

Why is it good? This approach adds value, and can reinforce customer loyalty and positive word of mouth

Good example

Have a personal touch: Team descriptionso When contacting Customer Service over the phone, the representative will always introduce

himself/herself; the same can be done online

By including pictures of their team and identifying themselves with a ^ (co-tag) and the team member’s initial Vodafone personalize the experience for customers

Team example Individual accountsLarger brands with high volumes of queries, even have individual accounts solely dedicated to customer service (see next slide for full AT&T case study)

AT & T – Where PR Becomes Customer CareThe problem:• On a normal day there are over 10,000 mentions of AT&T on social networks• Almost every day during the first 6 months of 2009 “#attfail” and “#AT&Tsucks” trended regularly on Twitter

The solution:• AT&T staffed up its social-media customer-care corps, starting with 5 people dedicated solely to responding to customer dissatisfaction of Twitter and YouTube this has now grown to encompass Facebook and consists of 19 people• To date, 32,000 customer service tickets come through social per month• AT&T flags its social media customer care on its bills, websites and other customer channels to make consumers aware that they can turn to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook with problems

Have a personal touch: Responseso Social Media is about creating relationships and talking with your customers. Personal touches can

help create an emotional bond with the brand

Good example Bad exampleRed Bull engages with Twitter community, responding to Tweets in an informal and conversational way, proactively reaching out to people mentioning the brand

Why is it good? They reach out proactively to their fans, and add personality to their brand

The response is personable and doesn’t showcase personality of the brand as expressed through other marketing channels such as viral ads, TV ads, print & general brand perception

Why is it bad? It looks like customer service was made responsible for this channel with no social or marketing guidance provided

• Social Media is also about engaging with yours fans. If they something nice about you, acknowledge them with a like or a comment

Not just the bad, rewarding the good

Société Perrier make their fans feel Welcome by engaging with them whilst still pushing content in a relevant way

Good example

Do not delete or ignore posts! o The number one rule in Social Media, is to accept all comments, both good and bado There is a natural fear of negative comments, however do not ignore them; try to respond in the best possible

way until the issue is resolved

Good example

Michael Arrington, Editor in Chief at TechCrunch (12,000 tech savvy followers) was experiencing extremely bad service with his Comcast Internet connection, and customer service were not much of a help Michael Tweeted Comcast, and within 20 minutes had received a call from Customer Service who dealt with the issue What is it good? Customer service were listening, and turned what could have been a PR disaster, into a PR opportunity (i.e. Michael Arrington ISP is Comcast)

Do not delete or ignore posts! Bad example

People learned from the news websites (rather than directly from the ticket provider) that the Ignition Festival was cancelled. Although they were previously active on Twitter and Facebook, during the time of crisis they just disappeared, ignoring tweets and posts from disappointed customers. They Tweeted once to apologise and then deleted their social media accounts altogether. This, of course, resulted in angry blog posts and Facebook groups – I don’t think they will run the festival under the same name in the future!

And finally, don’t panic!• If something goes wrong, stick to the honest, open and personal principles in your response

The Red Cross's social media specialist sent a personal tweet by mistake from the company account.

The Red Cross did a great job of owning up to the mistake, and even poked fun out of themselves in a later tweet.

This was done promptly, transparently and wittily. The result was not only a recovering a situation, but also coming out of it positively and increasing their donations.