To answer this, we need to go back, long before social media existed. The scenario is all too common. Customer has an issue with Company A; approaches the service representative; does not gain satisfaction; perhaps speaks to management. No satisfaction. The customer’s perception is that he/she is done wrong by and is motivated to seek third party satisfaction (i.e. Chamber of Commerce, tell friends, spread the word in some way). Before email, this was usually done by a phone call or snail mail and the entire process may have taken at least a few days to complete its cycle, with the end result being possible damage to the company’s reputation.
With the introduction of email, it became much faster to send written complaints and to “CC” everyone and anyone who the customer felt should know. The stakes were becoming higher since it was easier to forward those emails and spread this negative light electronically. Suddenly cycle could be completed within hours.
Move ahead ten to fifteen years and social media allows this scenario to play itself out ten times faster. The time it takes the customer to perceive poor service delivery and unsatisfactory service recovery can have a damaging tweet or post hitting cyberspace within minutes. Perhaps this is the most daunting part of social media impacting a company’s business; the time to recover from a service failure has shrunk into minutes rather than what may have been days or weeks.
Having said that, not much has changed in the way businesses can and should handle customer concerns so that consumers are not motivated to broadcast their displeasure with a larger audience. Here are TWO key things companies can be doing to ensure the customer-business issue is contained and chances of it entering the social media realm are minimized.
1. Ensure representatives for your company are service professionals. Service professionals know how to
· Read customers body language and recognize emotion,
· Listen effectively,
· Use language that encourages the right responses from customers,
· Have the ability to devise creative solutions and,
· Follow through on any promises and proposed remedies
2. Create a safe environment for customer feedback – If we want the customer to tell us what the problem is rather than telling the world, we must create a service-oriented environment where they feel welcome to do so. We have likely all felt the discomfort of approaching service reps about concerns we have only to be met with a defensive attitude, poor communication skills and a that feeling of salt being thrown on the wound. Sometimes it is simply too uncomfortable for consumer to bring up an issue. The anonymity of social media however can become a highly attractive alternative. I am recalling the saying, “If you don’t care, somebody else will”.
If you are at all in doubt about how powerful social media can be to businesses in a negative way, I encourage you to do a search in Twitter using the hash tag #customerservice. Study the feed and see how many users have posted comments within the last hour –mentioning companies by name about poor service.
My passion is service professionalism training and helping businesses understand how important it is to build the relationship with consumers AND manage an ongoing relationship to encourage ongoing positive word-of-mouth referrals. Handling challenging situations professionally and in a timely fashion at the point it is brought to your attention can greatly minimize a consumer’s motivation to take it to a broader audience.