According to a Forbes article, by 2020, customer experience is expected to become the most important way for brands to differentiate themselves in a crowded market, according to Walker’s “Customers 2020: A Progress Report.” Considering this trend and the fact that social media has arguably become one of the most important customer service platforms across industries, businesses must evolve their basic social community management models to deliver more sophisticated social customer care to continue to win in the marketplace.
Positive social interactions with customers can help businesses win loyalty and drive business success. However, when a business is lax about managing social interaction, or worse, makes a wrong move on social media, it can face swift, business-threatening retribution from unhappy consumers.
In today’s disruptive business economy, in order to create distinctiveness for a brand online, it is imperative to have social customer care that is more than good — or even great. It must be legendary.
What Is ‘Legendary’ Social Customer Care?
It is all about creating a memorable experience that goes beyond the moment, launching a domino effect of positive shares, likes, comments and brand awareness. I have identified the following to be the five key components of a legendary customer experience in social channels.
Speed: The expected response time for a customer service interaction has reduced — to as few as a few minutes or even a few seconds in some cases. Businesses can achieve this through the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is adept at sifting, sorting and routing thousands of social posts to the appropriate departments for immediate response.
Fun: Customers are more likely to be loyal to brands they can connect with, and social media is one of the best tools to show brand personality. Businesses should take any opportunity they can to respond with humor or fun, including using emojis, to bring your brand personality to life.
Surprise: While most customers come to social media to interact, others are posting with no expectation of a response. This offers brands a great opportunity to reach out in an authentic way, whether it’s to solve a problem or simply strengthen a customer relationship.
Resolution: Responding and resolving a customer issue quickly and efficiently is essential. Sometimes a chatbot can achieve this and other times it means redirecting the conversation to a closed, private message to collect personal information. Making sure you have the technology to create a seamless customer interaction from beginning to end is key.
Being legendary requires a new, better, more innovative approach. It requires the best of both human effort and intellect, as well as technology enablement and artificial intelligence — a balance of bots and brains working together.
The Technology Element
Data and algorithms have become the lifeblood of marketing. Everything can be measured on social media and the resulting best practices of those measurements dictate much of what we do day-to-day. As the keepers of this complex and important information, we, as marketers, have the ability to convert numbers into highly personalized interactions with our customers. Through carefully crafted strategies, we combine AI, chatbots and analytics with a human touch for authentic and powerful customer engagement.
Smart and strategic implementation of AI ensures every brand mention is reviewed and categorized intelligently into addressable and prioritized buckets, using sophisticated analytics and data tagging. Going beyond simply reducing the dependence on live support for basic interactions, AI makes it possible for higher-impact customer interactions, increasing satisfaction and driving brand loyalty.
Using this approach, we can elevate online customer engagement to online brand management. In a competitive social media landscape that rewards the most engaged and creative brand advocates, the businesses armed with AI have a real leg up.
Through an integrated, holistic customer experience strategy we can seize the opportunity to engage and make a splash when someone is having fun with a brand. We can create brand advocacy through natural online engagement and community building.
The Human Element
The people behind the technology are the most important elements to acquiring “legendary” status. Hiring talent for social customer care that is naturally empathetic, predisposed to problem-solving, able to remain calm in the face of angry customers and able to think quickly and creatively on their feet is critical.
Customers are often loyal and that can lead to being more willing to spend greater amounts of money on a product based on their brand perception. These consumers value the customer experience — possibly even more than the product itself — so, if they have a positive experience with the brand, their loyalty will likely grow.
Based on this trend, online reputation management and creating an epic customer service experience by building a skilled customer experience team should be every brand’s top digital priority — and marketers are best positioned to lead the charge.