It’s no wonder that people turn to Twitter for tech support. In the heat of a frustrating moment, it is much easier to fire off a quick question on Twitter than to wait on hold for an operator. But how effective is the microblogging site as a customer service tool? Here’s how Spotify, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Yelp handled some tough customers.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
Have you ever submitted a complaint over social media? If not, I recommend it for the next time you have a problem. You’ll be surprised at how fast a company will get someone responding to your query if it’s public for the world to see. This is the new era of customer service, and this new infographic from ZenDesk takes a look at the new phenomena.
With Twitter increasingly used by consumers to ask questions and register complaints, many brands are increasingly prepared to provide customer service on that channel. There are circumstances when the issue is more efficiently and effectively resolved offline.
Under what circumstances should customer service reps take the conversation private, how can customer resistance to moving the issue be addressed and what are the best practices for making this technique work?
Answers to these important questions after the jump.
Customer service person replied, “Take heart; Norman Mailer wrote all of his novels by hand. And you’ve surely heard the phrase, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’? It would sound absurd to substitute ‘laptop’ for the word ‘pen.’”
Ever had a long haul flight and idly dreamed of the perfect meal waiting for you on arrival? Well, Peter Shankman did too, and when he tweeted his desire, there was a steak waiting for him. It’s an example of good customer service and a creative use of social media other businesses can learn from.
mbStartups is pleased to announce the Startup of the Week: a weekly post dedicated to the newest faces in new media.
In honor of President’s Day weekend sales, this week’s featured startup is Tello, a forum for thanking businesses for providing excellent customer service. The company’s logo evokes the aesthetics of the 1950′s, said CEO and founder Joe Beninato, “when service used to be good.” We recently met up with Benitato to talk about this latest spin on the rate-it site and the new business model that goes with it.
How it Works
Customers can already voice their opinions on Yelp, but with Tello, instead of skimming through the comments to find out which bridal consultant or massage therapist to book by name, they can check out a local business and instantly see who has gotten the best feedback. “Yelp is about the place – we’re more about the people in the place,” Beninato said. The content is crowd-sourced, with options to add both the name of the business and the employees who work there.
The mobile app, launched February 9th for iPhone, iPad and Android, connects to Facebook and Twitter, and will eventually have a check-in function as well. We tried it out on Baked, the Brooklyn bakery where we conducted the interview. The address popped up, along with a map. Rather than giving a star rating, customers are asked to decide if the experience was positive or negative, and leave a comment if they’d like to elaborate. “People tend to be polarized,” Beninato said of the star-rating system. A simpler question to ask is, “would you recommend it or not?” We didn’t catch the cashier’s name at Baked, but whoever he was, we clicked the icon to give him a thumbs up. A public complaint board runs the risk of subjecting poorly paid cashiers and new hires with too much negative publicity, but Beninato says that so far, 80% of the users have used the service to leave compliments rather than complaints.
Beyond local eateries and shops, Tello is good for any company that relies on customer service to stay competitive, like car dealerships, hotels and airlines. For example, Beninato credits good customer service for moving Virgin America ahead of the competition in an industry that’s suffered from heightened security. “They’re thriving when others are having trouble,” he said, and the pink mood lighting doesn’t hurt, either.
In a display of superb customer service and a clear awareness of the conversations happening on social media, Skype is offering its customers some free Skype credits in response to the 24-hour downtime last week.
Mobile apps are all the rage right now but recent survey data shows that consumers still prefer to use mobile web. Years ago ecommerce paved the online path for shoppers. Here’s five reasons consumers have become internet lazy and why. What is your company doing to help the lazy consumer?
This morning following me posting one of my articles, my internet suddenly shut off. I later learned that it was because a payment I had made over the phone had not been processed. In between me not having internet access and tweeting it via my mobile phone, @comcastcares asked me if I had my issue resolved. While it wasn’t instantaneous, it was really quick. Previously, in order to receive the phone you would have to pick up the phone and call customer service to get some help.
What Comcast has done is extremely simple but transformational. They are proactively engaging frustrated clients. This model is not new but what happened with me on Twitter painted a funny picture in my head. Imagine sitting in front of your brand new plasma TV, the installation people finish mounting it, turn on the TV and everything works. Once the installation team walks out the door you start using the television and realize that you can’t change the channels because there’s a lock on the cable box.
After yelling a few expletives you proceed to try getting things to work. Within moments your phone rings and it’s a technical support person there to walk you through resolving your problem. “How did you know I had a problem,” you ask the technical support representative. “Your girlfriend just told her friend on Twitter that she was enjoying watching you figure out how to make your new television work.”
Your girlfriend (or significant other) smiles as you glance over and the tech support rep proceeds to walk you through the process of configuring your television. This is only one example of the future of support. Social technology is changine the way that brands interact with us, not just the way we interact with them. This began with blogs but new social technologies are making it it easier for us to have a personal relationship with our brands.
Over the coming years as social information makes parts of our lives more public, brands will have the opportunity to have more substantial bonds with their clients. While we thought the digital world would distance us from brands since we wouldn’t necessarily have a face to face interaction, we are actually being brought closer thanks to these new social technologies. Do you have any examples of improved brand interaction thanks to these new technologies?
