How to Complain on Facebook and Twitter

What’s fun and exciting this week? My last post on “How Kroger Ruined, Then Saved My Daughter’s Birthday” was the third most popular post of all time here on No Fluff Social Media. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read it.

I often write about how big companies can improve their customer care in social media and I got to thinking perhaps some of you would be interested to know how to complain or ask a question of those brands on Facebook or Twitter.

For example, what if you get really bad service at Kroger or your frustrated with your AT&T cell phone bill always being wrong. Today, you may dial the 1-800 customer service number and may not find a good experience.

It’s possible you have to fumble through one of those dreaded IVR’s, you might wait on hold for a while or be limited to only calling from 9-5pm EST Monday through Friday.

Maybe you’ve tried email and had to fill out one of those pain in the butt contact us forms then had to wait 2-3 days for a simple response.

The emergence of Facebook and Twitter has given consumers like you and I a new convenient channel to interact with the companies we do business with like grocery stores, airlines and restaurants.

Interested? Below I’ve provided directions on how to interact with brands and a few examples so you can see what other consumers post.

The first example is Kroger on Facebook.

1. First, navigate to the Kroger Facebook page.

2. Locate the comment box on the top left side just under their cover photo.

3. Write your question, complaint or praise and click post. Simple as that. (keep it professional, swearing and being disrespectful may get your comment deleted or ignored)

Below is an example of a typical complaint a customer may have on a brand page like Kroger.

Here is an example from the AT&T Facebook page. Sometimes other customers will comment on your post.

Ideally, a brand will respond to your post very quickly like in this Lowe’s example below. Reminder, you can post questions and even give a positive shout out, Facebook comments aren’t just for complaining. Within the hour, Lowe’s responded with helpful follow-up information.

Let’s move from Facebook to Twitter.

A few days ago I posted a comment on the Delta Airlines Twitter account. I flew from Detroit to Chicago last week and they announced that due to the short nature of the flight, there was no time for drink service.

That seemed strange since my Southwest and American Airlines flights from Detroit to Chicago in the past month both served drinks. Obviously not a huge deal but I thought I would send Delta a tweet. I think you’ll find it interesting what happened from there.

First I wanted to find the Delta Airlines Twitter handle so I did a Google search. (Some companies have created a specific customer service Twitter handle like @DeltaAssist)

Second, I clicked the blue post button in the top right corner of the Delta Twitter Bio. Next I typed my comment in the comment box. Last I just hit Tweet. (Notice on the left Delta has posted the first names and Twitter initials of their Twitter customer service team)

First, Delta did not take the time to respond to my tweet. But guess who did? Since I mentioned American Airlines in my tweet they responded almost immediately which led to a back and forth engagement. Pretty cool!

Here is an example from Best Buy, it appears they are monitoring closely since they responded 2 minutes after the post with an offer to help.

This guy is not happy with Volkswagen!

A few keys to remember

1. Not all brands are good at monitoring and responding to questions and complaints on Facebook and Twitter. Your comment might be ignored.

2. Sometimes brands won’t answer your complaint or question in social media but will just respond with “call or email us” which can be really frustrating.

3. The above example screen shots were done from my laptop, however, it works the exact same way from the Facebook and Twitter mobile apps which is why it’s so convenient!

4. If you post a complaint later at night or on the weekends, expect a potential delay in response. Some brands are monitoring just during normal business hours, the good news, more and more companies are expanding their coverage.

Social Customer Care has given us as consumers a more powerful voice to fight back against bad customer service. Brands understand the viral nature of social media and are scared that just one bad experience can explode into a gigantic public relations nightmare.

Not to mention companies understand that what other consumers post on Facebook, Twitter and review sites help us determine whether we are going to buy a product or not.

In the past you’ve heard the word of mouth saying, “If a customer has a bad experience, they may tell 10 friends.” Well in the world of social media, “If a customer has a bad experience they may tell 10,000 friends!”

If you thought this post was helpful and your family or friends may be interested in how to post a comment on a brand’s Facebook or Twitter account please share this post, thanks so much again for reading my blog.

How Kroger Ruined, Then Saved My Daughter’s Birthday!

Happy Monday morning everyone! Throw away those Monday morning blues, it’s going to be a great week. I had a fantastic weekend but it almost turned disastrous! I love it when I can tell real life customer service stories here on my blog.  Thanks for visiting this week.

My daughter Sophia Rose turned 5 years old. We did the typical summer barbeque, with about 40 of our closest friends and family.

Sophia prefers cookies over cake so my wife Staci ordered 2 cookie cakes from our local Kroger.

A few hours before the party I went to Kroger to pick up the balloons and cookie cake and unfortunately the cakes were not ready. In fact they didn’t have our order.

Now I realize mistakes happen, I’ve spent my career helping huge brands improve their customer service and I’ve seen everything.

When I explained the cookie cakes were for my daughters 5th birthday I got that “what do you want me to do about it, it’s not my fault look”. The woman behind the bakery took her time looking through the orders as slow as she possible could.

I got all the negative body language as well, the rolled eyes and talking under her breath to her coworkers.

The rude unhelpful bakery employee did say if I could wait she would make the cookies but I was on my way to a soccer game and didn’t know what Staci wanted written on the cakes. At the end of the day, this isn’t even close to the worst thing that could happen in life but this Kroger employee was so frustrating.

I simply said, “this situation is really disappointing that my 5-year-old daughter won’t have her cake ready for her birthday” and walked out. I called the last person in the world Kroger wanted to hear from at that moment. A stressed out mom planning, cooking and cleaning for a party.

This is where the story turns.

A very pleasant, empathetic and remorseful store manager assured my wife that this situation is not reflective of how his customers should be treated. He insisted that his bakery manager would make the cookie cakes and with time running short, personally deliver them to our house.

Wow!

Sure enough prior to the party a smiling, friendly bakery manager hopped out of her car and delivered the cookie cakes on time.  She didn’t say I hope you will still shop at Kroger or please give us another chance. Just a simple apology and heart-felt I hope we didn’t ruin your daughter’s birthday.

Disaster averted!

Often times when I’m dealing with executives about making more investment in customer service I’m met with a very common objection. There is no way to tie return on investment or direct impact to the bottom line from soft measurements like lifetime value, retention and loyalty that are all benefits of superior customer service.

I hope Kroger executives hear about my story. Since I travel a lot which puts a heavy load on my wife Staci, every weekend I take the kids to the grocery store to give her a little break. I also manage our personal budget and pay the bills and can say with confidence we spend about $175 a week at Kroger which is only a half mile and very convenient to our house.

Let’s do some bottom line math. $150 a week x 52 weeks = $7,800 annually. At risk because of $25 in cookie cakes and 1 bad employee that could care less about a 5 year old’s birthday party. By the time my kids graduate high school we will probably spend over $125,000 at that Kroger.

I think the store and bakery manager’s little investment in good customer service had a pretty strong ROI don’t you?

Switzerland: Chocolate, Cheese, Watches and Social Media?

Good Morning ‘No Fluff’ Social Media readers. Last week’s post on social ad’s was a hit, I’m thankful so many of you took the time to reach out and let me know you enjoyed the videos. I’ll understand if people take a break from my blog this week with the holiday weekend but if you chose to be here you have my gratitude.

Duty calls so it’s no holiday in the Schaeffer household. Especially for my unselfish, patient and understanding wife. I’ll be hopping on a plane for Switzerland today while she manages three kids by herself for a week. I don’t think my amazing wife reads my boring blogs but if you do, I love you honey! Did I mention your beautiful, stunning and gorgeous?

I’m going to be speaking at a workshop on Social Customer Service. A topic I love. I’m still finalizing the presentation but here is the outline. What do you think?

1. The History of Customer Service

• From the general store when the owner knew every customer by name thru phone, email and now Facebook and Twitter.

2. How the Customer Has Evolved

• The most important word in Customer Service is Customer, not Service. It’s always about the customer and the customer has changed. We are much more knowledgeable today, we buy what our family/friends recommend and want to do business with companies that align with our personal values.

3. The Customer Service Department is Dead

• Brands can’t afford to have customer service as a standalone department. It simply has to be weaved into the fabric of everything the organization does. It’s like culture, there is no culture department, it’s the way people behave and make decisions. Customer service is the same.

4. Marketing Will You Marry Me? Love, Customer Service

• Customer Service IS the new marketing. As consumers we don’t care about TV commercials, newspaper ad’s and big billboards. We get online and read reviews and ask our peers before purchasing a product or service. Customer service and marketing have to work in concert because customer acquisition and retention are no longer mutually exclusive, they are one in the same. Happy customers buy more, happy customers get new customers to buy. Dissatisfied customers leave, and take potential consumers with them.

5. Listening Strategies for Social Customer Service

• Traditional social listening is focused on brand/product mentions, competitors and campaign measurement. Listening for social care is proactively looking for consumers that need help, have a question, communicated a negative experience, took the time to share a positive experience or perhaps just in pre-purchase mode doing a little online research.

6. Social Customer Care Metrics and KPI’s

• As discussed in the previous point, because listening strategies are different between marketing and customer service so are the metrics. For example, social care metrics measure how many customers helped each day, top complaints and products issues. However, although different on the surface, service can learn from marketing because shouldn’t we be measuring likes, shares and reach of our service recovery engagements?

Well that’s an appetizer, there will be much more to the presentation including;

• Operational models on creating a Center of Excellence vs Localized support vs Centralized program structures
• Technology requirements and the ecosystem of tools required to deliver outstanding social customer service
• Social Customer Care Playbook. The process, training, certification, reports, and roles/responsibilities involved in launching a program.
• Social Customer Care Maturity Curve. Excited to be delivering a brand new creation to help brands with a crawl, walk, run, fly approach. Social care is a journey, not a project with a start and end date.

I’ll let you know next week how it goes hopefully with some really cool pictures of Switzerland, I’ve heard its beautiful.  Have a fun safe holiday weekend and thanks again to all of you who comment, share and like my blog.

What Keeps Me Up At Night

Good morning everyone! Happy Friday.  More importantly Happy Mother’s Day Weekend to all of you fortunate enough to have children, what a blessing they are thanks to you Mom. I’m very lucky, my mom Donna is an amazing mother and I love that I moved back to Detroit to spend more time with her. As lucky as I am, my 3 children have really hit the jackpot with Staci. One day is nowhere near enough to celebrate all she does for our children.

Mom’s….and Dad’s for that matter in social media I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. There are so many exciting opportunities and challenges in social that I thought I’d put a list together of the things I’ve been working on with clients that keep me up and night.

1. Social Sales – Everybody wants to know how do I make money with social, how do I show a hard ROI.
2. Social Customer Care – Executing the use case for customer retention and customer service in social media and showing the impact on retention/loyalty.
3. Social Marketing – Optimizing the most effective and efficient use of marketing investment across the social internet, social marketing is the last unaccountable spend but not for much longer.
4. Competitive Analysis – There is such a hyper focus on competitors in social media, wish more resources were focused on improving internally first.
5. Social Technology – Integrating social media listening, publishing, advertising and search strategies to optimize social investment, resources and results.
6. Social Partner Management – Define, document and present a preferred social media ecosystem including digital and creative agencies, media buyers, solution partners and system integrators.
7. Customer Experience – Present a coordinated Web/Mobile/Social customer experience every single time.
8. Employee Engagement – Educate, create and harness the power of a brand’s greatest social media advocates? Think about the power of employee advocates for a brand like Lowe’s with all those customer touch points.
9. Social Culture – Drive the same cultural revolution inside a brand at a faster speed than consumer behavior is changing on the outside in social.
10. Social Decision Making – Driving adoption to the point to where a brand routinely leverages social data and customer feedback to make improved business decisions.
11. Social Center of Excellence – Create a social media nerve center centralizing key functions including PR, Communications, Agency, Customer Service, IT and Marketing into one physical location all centered around the customer.
12. Big Data – Measure the impact of online to offline transactions on new customer acquisition, conquests and retention.
13. Social Media Playbook – Building a social media playbook outlining the key goals, metrics, roles/responsibilities, process, policies, content and engagement guidelines, education and adoption strategies.
14. Sponsorships & Events – Maximize the positive impact of social media on sponsorship opportunities and live events.
15. PR & Crisis Management – Protect the brand and mitigate risk from the tidal wave of negative sentiment.

I think it’s going to be a long night! See you next week. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Why Air Canada Failed Customer Service Training

Thanks so much for sticking with me for 8 straight weeks, can’t believe we are so far into 2013 already.  Hope you are enjoying my blog posts, I certainly enjoy your comments and for those that have signed up to receive No Fluff Social Media via email or share my blog on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn please allow me to return the favor.  What can I do to help you?

Just got back from a super fun trip to Dominican Republic so feeling nice and refreshed.  Prior to that I was visiting Radian6 in Canada and currently I’m in New York meeting new teammates at Buddy Media.  Been a bit of a whirlwind with 9 flights in the last 16 days and it got me thinking.

About 10 years ago I spent almost 2 years living in Europe and working with British Airways, Aer Lingus and Finn Air.  As a customer service advocate I couldn’t wait to dive in.

If you love a challenge, obviously airlines are at the bottom of the barrel when comes to deliver a memorable consumer experience. I should share that although I blog mostly about social media, this post is about my first and only true love, customer service.  I’ll understand if you want to skip out now and I’ll see you right back here next week.

Caught in my customer service cross hairs on a recent flight was Air Canada.  Here is why.

I’m sitting down reading my Kindle waiting to board my flight.  The gate check in agent makes an announcement over the loud-speaker.

With an aggressive tone she states, “We are in an oversold situation this afternoon.  Three of you must rebook on a later flight or this plane is not taking off.  I repeat, this flight is oversold, unless three volunteers come up to the desk to book a later flight, no one will get to their final destination. We are offering a $500 flight voucher to any passenger who will rebook.”

Did her name tag say Customer Service Agent or Drill Sargent? You may be thinking, just relax Chad, $500 is a lot of money and I’m sure a herd of people sprinted up to the counter tripping each other on the way.

Not exactly the case! I was already 2 days late in getting home thanks to the winter storm Nemo.  I’m sure many of my fellow travelers were in the same situation.  Some probably had it a lot worse and weren’t able to get a hotel room and literally were sleeping in the airport.

And let’s not forget the poor crabby check in agent. It’s very likely because of the storm and hundreds of cancellations she was working overtime and had been yelled at by obnoxious passengers all day.

But all this is not the point is it.  Regardless of circumstances, is this how you speak to customers? Is this the best way to motivate people to rebook?  I’m pretty sure it was not the passengers fault Air Canada overbooked the flight.

Here is what I would have said if I was working behind the check in counter with that microphone in my hand.

“I have an announcement that a few lucky people are going to be very excited about.  First, thank you for being so patient and friendly here in the gate today. No question it has been a long weekend for some of you, I especially feel for those that are either traveling with children or have not been able to get home to see their kids.  If you wouldn’t mind giving me your attention for just a few moments I have an important announcement you will certainly want to hear.

Although its freezing and there is lots of snow outside right now, it’s a sunny beautiful 80 degrees in the Caribbean.  Imagine the sand between your toes and fruity drink in your hand on the beaches of Mexico.  Perhaps there is a loved one some where that you haven’t been able to see in so long it hurts.

Well for the first 3 people who would give me the pleasure of rebooking you on the very next flight will receive a $500 flight voucher to swap those snow boots for flip-flops. Or perhaps you would rather warm your heart with a hug only a special friend or family member can give.

Truthfully, I’m a bit embarrassed to have to inconvenience 3 of you.  This overbooking situation is Air Canada’s fault, not yours, and I understand you just want to get home. Please accept my heart-felt apology.

I know some, maybe many of you will want to work with me to rebook your flight but I can only accommodate the first 3 customers. Thank you for considering my offer.”

If my style and customer focused voice seems aligned with how you would like to speak to your customers but you are struggling with the words please contact me, I love to share my passion and help others.

I hope you crush it this week, thank you for reaching my blog. Next week I’ll be writing from San Francisco where I’ll be in new hire boot camp with Salesforce.com.  Delta better have a friendly check in agent!

How to Solve the #1 Challenge in Social!

For those of you who have joined me every week in 2013 here on the no fluff social media blog I really appreciate you. If its your first time checking it out, Welcome!

Working for the Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud I get to discuss social media with the world’s largest brands everyday and there is almost always one common challenge.

How do I know if my customer Chad Schaeffer, who lives in Plymouth, Michigan, and has an email of chadmschaeffer@gmail.com and the new 313 area code cell phone is the same guy on Twitter @ChadSchaeffer.

BTW…..Did you realize there are three Chad Schaeffer’s in South Dakota alone? This can be a tricky problem!

In the world of marketing and customer service everything starts with knowing who your customers are and this challenge in social media has companies pulling their hair out. Some of the systems being used to store customer data can’t even capture twitter handle.

I think the reasons are obvious why marketers want to know who you are in social media, things like;

1. They want to target you based on demographic data

2. They want to target you based on what you do and where you go online

3. They want to target you based on what you have bought in the past

Likewise in customer service

1. They want to personalize their service, maybe give you the white glove treatment if you are an influencer

2. They want to know if you have called, emailed or chatted with them before about your issue/question

3. They want to build a customer history for you, understanding what your experience has been like with their brand

So how do you match twitter handles with your existing customer data?  Don’t do what I’ve seen some companies trying to do. Building complex search algorithms that match Twitter profile data with customer data in a CRM database and try to merge the two together automatically.

The solution is far easier and we only have to go back 13 years in history to find it.

It’s called email.

When I first started working in CRM in 2000, brands began preparing for consumer email.  Personal email starting becoming popular around 1995 but it always takes a few years for companies to catch up to consumers.

In 2000 it was the same question, people are sending me emails from bigbooty@aol.com and slimshady@hotmail.com, how do I know who they are?

Remember what happened next?

Apply for a store credit card (enter email address), call customer service (can I have your email address), join a loyalty program (email address), buy something online (create a username aka email address), want to receive coupons and special offers (email address), want to stop junk mail and join or email list (email address).

Fast forward and what do most Fortune 500 consumer base companies have? Giant CRM systems filled with consumer information linked with an email address.

I’m just not smart enough to think of the really advanced brilliant technological solutions so I have to do the best I can with my average smarts and find the simple no fluff common sense approaches like start asking your consumers for their twitter handle every time they interact with you!

Here is the last point, again similar to email. Your customers data privacy should be a high priority, same with only using that twitter handle for things your consumer has agreed to.  Let’s learn from the credibility many companies have lost by spamming consumers.

Heading to Punta Cana for a few days, I hope wherever you are the sun is shining on you as well! Until next week.

22 Take Away’s From SOCAP Social Customer Care Panel

Last week at the 2012 Annual SOCAP (Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals) Conference in San Diego at the beautiful Hotel Del Coronado I facilitated a panel of Fortune 500 brands on Social Customer Care.

The focus of the panel was to give the audience practical straight forward take away’s in launching a social customer care program. 

Here are 22 that made the list.

1. Start your business case for Social Customer Care around RETENTION.

2. Customers are talking about your brand in social, it isn’t always positive and opinions are contagious. REPUTATION is another key to your business case.

3. Social Customer Care is more than just Facebook and Twitter. (One Fortune 500 brand receives 8 issues in forums for every 1 issue on Facebook)

4. It’s important to have a dedicated team for Social Customer Care.

5. Social Media Marketing and Social Customer Care are different. Marketing focus is on content development, Care focus is on helping consumers.

6. 78% of consumers will try to find a solution online before calling/emailing a contact center.

7. Approximately 75% of consumer’s Facebook posts, Tweets or online community posts go ignored.

8. Where appropriate, respond publicly. It shows you listen, take action and can deflect future contacts.

9. For staffing understand when your consumers post in social media. Panelists received highest volume between 5-10pm EST and only 25% less volume on weekends.

10. Crawl, walk, run with Social Customer Care. Panelists started with team of 3-5 people just in forums.

11. Social Care is not just about responding to complainers. Social experience includes brand discussion and peer reviews that can influence purchase decisions.

12. It’s common for consumers to have called/emailed/chatted before trying to get their issue resolved in social.

13. Key requirement for social technology. Lots of mentions of words like Mustang or Volt, focus on actionable content.

14. Publicly state you have done everything you can to help ‘flamers’. Then let your positive reputation and community come to your rescue.

15. Agent follow-up should be personable and human, avoid template robotic responses.

16. Partnering with marketing is critical to your success. Social Care is a compliment, not a competitor to social marketing.

17. Invite your brand teams to train your agents on social 101 and communicating in the brand voice.

18. Don’t be quick to create a brand hosted forum for your consumers, instead follow them where they already are.

19. Contact types are generally similar in social care as they are in other communication channels.

20. If you only listen and respond 8-5pm EST M-F, tell your consumers that.

21. Create response ‘swim lanes’ with your marketing team so you both know who is responding to what in social.

22. Response time is a critical metric and directly relates to level of customer satisfaction for social care.

Get Started! Social Service – Part 5

Although this is my final post in the Get Started Social Service series, our journey is just beginning SOCAP and CRSummit.

The rebirth of customer care has provided such a bright future for those of us struggling in the world of complaint departments.

The contact center of the future driven by social CRM gives us the opportunity to be sitting at the C-suite impacting the bottom line like never before.  But we have to seize this opportunity so let’s get started.

Technology Requirements – It would be foolish to have marketing personnel use the same contact center software agents leverage to retain and wow customers for their jobs, so why would customer care use the same listening and social reporting software as marketing?

1. Filtering – There is lots of conversation on the internet.  Not all of it, not even most of it is actionable so to avoid customer service agents weeding through the needle in the hay stack, make sure you are comfortable with the filtering functionality.

2. Routing – The relevant social conversation remaining after the filtering should be routed to the right response team based on your documented swim lanes.

3. Productivity – Keep it simple for customer service agents, they need to spend time responding and wowing customers not fooling around with a bunch of sexy bells and whistles.  Don’t be distracted with unnecessary functionality required for marketing but just reduces usability and productivity for your agents.

Tip: Reporting is always a key requirement, here is some food for thought.

Social Media Marketing Metrics	Social Service Metrics
Sentiment & Share of Conversation	How Many Customers Thanked Today
Friends, Followers, Views, Likes, ReTweets	How Many Customers Helped Today
Word Clouds & Hot Topics	Volume of Service Issues by Source (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Forums, Blogs)
Influencer Analysis	Top 10 Complaints & Inquiries in Social
Geo-Location Insights	Response Time & Escalations By Source

Key Process Requirements – Hopefully by now you’ve realized I like to keep things simple.  I don’t think you need to go crazy with process engineering and documentation right off the bat.  However, there are a few key steps to get in writing and agreed upon, hope this list helps.

1. Channel Expansion – Document all the Facebook pages, Twitter handles, forums and YouTube channels (with id’s/passwords) and how you evaluate and expand into new communities.

2. Response Swim lanes – Document who is going to respond to what on each channel and get concensus with marketing.

3. Escalation & Offline – Not every consumer can be satisfied in social media with 140 characters or on a Facebook wall for the whole world to see.  How are you going to respond to get them off-line?  Are you going to transfer them to another function? What information are you going to transfer with the consumer?  How do you close the loop back in the original social channel?

Tip: For swim lanes as your deciding on who is going to respond use actual tweets, posts and comments because it’s a harder exercise then you might expect.

Social Service Wrap Up – I really enjoyed writing this blog series and I hope you found it helpful.    I’m a huge fan of everyone in the customer care community and I look forward to evangelizing on your behalf at the next SOCAP or CRSummit.  Remember, keep it simple and just get started!

Tip: I would love to continue the conversation at cschaeffer@3csi.com or 614.302.2182. Scratch that, you are all social media experts now so reach out on twitter @chadschaeffer.

If you missed Monday’s Get Started! Social Service – Part 1; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/get-started-social-service-part-1/

1. Where are customers talking about your brand?

2. What are they saying?

3. How well are you responding to customer service opportunities today?

Tuesday’s post Get Started! Social Service – Part 2; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/get-started-social-service-part-2/

4. What is your current response time?

5. When are customers talking about your brand (day/time)?

6. How to start responding if you aren’t today

Wednesday’s post Get Started! Social Service – Part 3; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/get-started-social-service-part-3/

7. How to partner with marketing

8. How to define response swim lanes

9. Free social media listening tools

Thursday’s post Get Started! Social Service – Part 4; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/get-started-social-service-part-4/

10. Social care strategy

11. How to get started on Twitter

12. Who to follow on Twitter

Get Started! Social Service – Part 2

While presenting recently at the SOCAP & CRSummit customer service conferences focusing on social media I met so many fantastic people who were struggling with how to launch their social customer care program. They recognize the avalanche of customer service opportunity is growing by the day and its time to do something about it and I’m here to help!

Each day this week I’m creating a simple blog post for beginners that will require no budget or technology.  (just a LITTLE bit of time commitment)

If you missed yesterdays Get Started! Social Service – Part 1 post, you can find it right here: https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/get-started-social-service-part-1/

The focus was on 3 things.

1. Where are customers talking about your brand?

2. What are they saying?

3. How well are you responding to customer service opportunities today?

Now its time to move on to Part 2. Let’s Get Started!

Response Time – If you are in the 25% minority that does respond to customer service opportunities in social media, how responsive are you in each channel?  Do a quick audit of your Twitter & Facebook pages, typically do you get back to customers within an hour? 24 hours?  That number is different dependent on industry but in general under an hour will WOW your customers, under 3hrs is still very good, 24hrs and you are pushing your luck.

Tip: Forum response times in the 4-6 hour range are typically seen as strong, even up to 24hrs is acceptable.

Social Arrival Pattern – Closely linked, in order to have an effective response time you have to understand what time customers post service opportunities in social.  The numbers may surprise you, for one of my large clients more volume comes in from 5pm-12am EST then 9-5pm EST.  Furthermore, their weekend volume only dips about 20% from weekday volume.

Tip: If you decide to start with 9-5pm EST, post those listening times in each social channel to set customer expectations.

How to Start Responding (Every Time!) – This is the one step that makes customer care professionals the most nervous.  Trust me, it’s not going to be as difficult as you might think.  Simply report on the top 20 reasons for contact for email and phone calls.  Typically, customer service opportunities in social are very similar.  So you can leverage the years of experience in responding to consumers in more traditional channels with all the same tools at your finger tips like your CRM tool, response library and knowledge management system.

Tip: Print out a common email response template, have your agents reword in 140 characters.

See you tomorrow when I discuss;

1. Customer Service & Marketing Partnership in Social

2. How to Create Response Swim Lanes

3. Free Social Monitoring Tools

Get Started! Social Service – Part 1

I recently presented at the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Baltimore and the Customer Response Summit in Austin on some of the fundamentals of creating a successful social customer care program. The most frequent question I was asked was, “Where do I start?”

I’m creating a week-long series of simple tips that requires no budget or fancy technology. I hope you find my blog helpful. Let’s get started!

Social Heat Map – First, you have to understand where the relationship building opportunities are by evaluating how much conversation takes place on each social community. Keep it simple, if there are 50+ opportunities a day its hot, 20+ its medium, 1+ its mild. It can vary by industry but start in this order;

1. Twitter
2. Surprisingly second, check out online forums and user communities
3. Facebook
4. Google+
5. Company Blog
6. LinkedIn (Company Page Comments, Groups)
7. YouTube (Company & Personal Channel)
8. Personal/Industry Blogs (WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger)
9. Review Sites (Yelp, Trip Adviser)
10. Pinterest
11. FourSquare

Remember, you are looking for actionable relationship building opportunities, not just brand mentions.

Tip #1 – A large 3CSI automobile client has 6 times the conversation on forums like Camaro5 and Corvette then they do on Facebook.

Social Conversation Map – What is the tone of the online conversation? Evaluate on each channel the primary reason for discussion. Twitter is great for compliments, proactive and sales leads. Forums generally have customers troubleshooting issues and asking questions.

1. Complaints
2. Questions
3. Compliments
4. Proactive (i.e. In the auto industry, participate in discussion about fuel mileage or towing)
5. Sales Leads (i.e. Should I buy the new Cadillac CTS or Lincoln MKZ?)

Tip #2 – Aren’t we trying to create raving fans in social so they influence their friends and family? So start by acknowledging and thanking all the customers online that already love you and take the time to share their praise.

Social Response Audit – Once you know where the conversation is happening do a simple self audit on Twitter, a few top forums and Facebook looking for consumer questions/complaints/compliments that have been ignored. Industry data suggests that about 70% of brands don’t respond to customer complaints on Facebook and Twitter.  Don’t be a part of that stat!

Tip #3 – Start from the bottom of Facebook streams and work your way up. Generally brands respond to the first few comments and ignore the stream as it grows.