Tag Archives: facebook

5 Tips for Perfecting Social Media Support

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5 Tips for Perfecting Social Media SupportWhich social channels do you turn to for customer support? Twitter? Facebook? Maybe even a direct message on Instagram? Over the years, social media has taken a minimalist approach to B2C support. But despite its architecture, social media remains a hot spot for customer service. In recent years, Twitter has undoubtedly become a key player; 80% of customer service requests on social media happen here, and the cost per resolution is 1/6th that of resolving through a call center. Additionally, Bain & Company found that when companies use social media to actively engage customers on service-related issues, those customers will spend 20% to 40% more on average with that company.

As other social platforms catch up to the customer service game, time is of the essence to perfect your social support strategy.

Here are 5 things to keep in mind when handling customer support on social media: Continue reading →

New & Old Facebook Tools for Customer Service Success

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New & Old Facebook Tools for Customer Service SuccessFacebook is constantly redefining the social media game, and the popular networking site’s recent foray into e-commerce, via its base of business “like pages”, is no exception. While recent changes to the Facebook business algorithms and advertising have a lot of companies rethinking their social strategies, the same customer service motto still rings true: Communication is key.

Here are four classic Facebook principles with the new rules and trends in mind. Continue reading →

Whitepaper: 10 Customer Service Statistics You Need to Know

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10 Customer Service Statistics You Need to KnowEvery single time a customer comes in contact with your brand, whether it’s in-store or online, each interaction is a touch point that contributes to the customer experience. Consumers are demanding more and their choices are ever expanding, which means that better service and improved experiences will lead to greater customer loyalty. But how do you know where to start and what to measure?

These 10 customer service, customer experience and customer expectation statistics are what you need to know for the coming year, and beyond. Continue reading →

6 Steps to The Ultimate Social Contact Center

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Social customer service is a great new opportunity to drive satisfaction, loyalty, and differentiation. Most organizations strive to adopt social media into their contact center, but few get it right.

Social media support is now adopted by more than 85% of organizations according to a recent 2011 TSIA social media survey,  up from under 40% in 2007. However, only 14% describe their programs as “mature.”

The explosive growth of social media adoption among 18-34 year olds is a clear indication that it’s a ‘must’ to stay competitive in today’s market.

Use the following list of comprehensive steps as a guide to effectively support your customers through social media.

Continue reading →

Twitter and Facebook are a real-time, always-on scoreboard for your company’s customer service

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The kids these days are demanding

We all know that poor customer experience will send your customers packing. If your target demographic is the 18-25 year olds, then you have an especially tough challenge. A recent study from Purdue looked at 18-25 years olds. It found:

100 percent of customers who were unsatisfied with their call center experience said they would refrain from purchasing from the company again. For all other age groups the number dropped to 63 percent…. Call centers should consider this a call to arms. Gen Y’ers expect their customer service encounters to mirror the speed, agility and simplicity of their smart phones, iPods and flat screens. But so far the call center industry has failed to do so.

– From CustomerManagementIQ

And they share opinions with their peers … a lot!

Combine that with a recent study which found that,

… at least once a week, 33% of active Twitter users share opinions about companies or products, while 32% make recommendations and 30% ask for them.

The April 2010 study by ROI Research was commissioned by Performics and is available here.

Potential customers are researching your company online

Here’s a fun experiment: go to http://search.twitter.com and type “on hold with”. The results that you will see aren’t exactly “hard data” but you can quickly get a sense of which companies are doing well by their customers and which are not. This is a real-time always-on scoreboard for your company’s efforts.

Nearly half of consumers report always or often using an online posting or blog to get others’ opinions about a company’s customer service reputation. But when consumers go online they’re looking for “watch outs,” saying they put greater credence in negative reviews on blogs and social networking sites than on positive ones (57% and 48%, respectively).

– American Express study called the
Global Customer Service Barometer

What it all means

Twitter, and social media in general, allows awareness of your customer service quality to propagate quickly through a community or the public at large. On the plus side, the benefits of providing good service can be felt more quickly and more strongly. On the downside, stories of bad service propagate even more quickly.

Live agent chat and its escalation-to-voice problem

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As the multi-channel call center gets more and more common, implementations of click-to-chat get more common. Like click-to-call, the goal with chat is that you can raise the conversion rate of browsers into buyers and/or lower the abandonment rate.

Hand-off problems

Advantages over click-to-call is that (in theory at least) an agent can handle multiple chat conversations at the same time, thus making a chat cheaper than a phone call. The problem with the theory is that chat session often have to escalate to a phone call, either by user choice or because of policy reasons. This is a recurring challenge for multi-channel client care – hand-off between channels. For more, see the post “The Multi-channel challenge”.

Let’s talk

If your company has installed click-to-chat or is planning to, we’d love to talk to you about how you’re addressing this challenge. It’s possible that, without a smooth hand-off from chat to voice, the gains may all be wiped out. We have been working on a solution (still in beta) to this problem at Fonolo and we’d love to talk to you about it.

 

Implementing Live Chat on your site? A strategy for escalation-to-voice is critical

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A number of companies are experimenting with providing an option for real-time chat with an agent. Like click-to-call, the hope is that you can raise the conversion rate of browsers into buyers and/or lower the abandonment rate. Advantages over click-to-call is that (in theory at least) an agent can handle multiple chat conversations at the same time, thus making a chat cheaper than a phone call.

The problem is escalation

The problem with the theory is that chat session often have to escalate to a phone call, either by user choice or because of policy reasons. As I mentioned in a previous post, hand-off between channels is a critical issue.

Smooth hand-off is critical

If you don’t have a way to do a smooth hand-off from chat to voice, you may lose all the gains. We have been working on a solution to this problem at Fonolo. So if your company currently has a real-time chat solution in place and you would like to tackle this problem, give us a ring!

Challenges of multi-channel customer service

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More and more channels

Today’s customer expect that your company is reachable through multiple channels: phone, web, email are the minimum. Mobile applications are becoming a “must-have” in some segments (airlines, banks). (Shai’s recent post quoted some recent data backing this up.)  Twitter, Facebook and some form of real-time chat are gaining popularity. One thing is clear: It’s just going to get more complicated!

A growing challenge

This is a growing challenge for the customer service organization of any company. Not only must you create the organizational infrastructure to handle these channels, you have to make policies regarding them that take into account the strengths and weaknesses of each channel.

Channel hand-off is key

Another challenge is transferring people between channels at the right moments to make the most of each channel’s ability. Online self-serve interactions are by far the lowest cost to your company, but you certainly don’t want to lose a sale by locking someone into that channel or not providing an alternative when there is a bump in the road.

The “bump-in-the-road” situation is one of the major drivers of click-to-call and click-to-chat implementations. For example, they allow you to rescue purchases from becoming abandoned shopping carts. But only if the implementation is done right.

Fonolo’s approach to providing a mobile- and web-friendly interface for your call center is the easiest and most flexible way to achieve that smooth hand-off. We can handle hand-off between email and calls, and even between live chat and calls. (More on that later!)