Excellent, once again. One of the reasons we’re so passionate about a listening “grid” approach – integrating social media monitoring and outreach across the organization – is exactly this issue. Our expectations for companies are changing daily, and a consistent experience is what customers are asking for.

They don’t distinguish between social and non-social channels. As a consumer, I expect to be treated the same whether I’m reaching out via email, the phone, Twitter, or in person. The companies leading this space are making big strides toward breaking down internal barriers and integrating the culture of social communication into more analog practices.

Thanks for the great post, and the shoutout as always.

Cheers,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra

Brilliant post, until organizations treat front line customer service as the most important branding tool in the “tool box”, we will still see people recount their frustrating experiences with Telecom/Wireless/Cable call centres on different social media platforms. Using social media to respond to customer complaints is putting a little band aid on much bigger problem.

You are dead on. A company can do all of the PR and branding it wants through all sorts of media, but ultimately a customer’s experience doing the simplest transaction is what determines their feelings for the brand.

Beavers or no beavers I loathe Bell because they could never get my bill right. Rogers Hi-Speed never goes down for me but they’ve got my bill wrong for the past four months – clever advertising and even the fact that someone responded from Rogers on Twitter doesn’t change the fact that their call centre can seem to solve a simple problem.

And while being on Twitter is all the rage, many brands show concern when you mention their brand negatively, but after that become unresponsive when you ask them to actually help fix the problem.