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Eight Tips for Scaling Social Customer Support

11.07.18

David Armano noted in a recent Harvard Business Review post on social business that listening to conversations is a valuable step but only the beginning:

“The true opportunity lies in scaling and operationalizing “social”.”

Online customer support is one of the key trends confronting companies as they embrace social business and look to interact with their consumers online. The growth of social customer support is being driven by three key factors: increased uptake of social media broadly; highly visible success stories from other companies and an expectation of two-way interaction in social channels.

As social support grows in reach and popularity, companies are facing the conundrum of how to successfully scale. How do you deal with an environment where an unlimited number of people may look to you for swift, helpful service?

Here are eight pointers for scaling your customer support:

1. Shift from reactive to proactive + reactive

Listening and reacting isn’t enough. Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows that search engines are the #1 source of information about companies for informed consumers. So, win the search battle. Mine your support records for the most common support requests (through both online and traditional channels) and create searchable resources to address those queries.

These resources could be blog posts, knowledge base articles, videos, graphics, whatever (more on that later in this post) — just make sure they’re in the language of your customers, not in business jargon, and that people can link directly to them.

2. Triage

My apologies to the purists out there who think everyone should be treated equally, but if one person could cause a major issue for your company while another is lower-profile, I’m going to prioritize accordingly. Is that ideal? No. Is that completely egalitarian? No. Is it practical and realistic? You bet.

This means setting out your criteria for triage ahead of time. If you have tiered support in other channels you may already have some of this. Consider:

Relative influence
Severity of issue
Spread of issue
…etc.

3. Respond publicly when possible

The natural inclination for many companies is to take negative chatter offline ASAP. There are a couple of pitfalls to this approach:

The Internet doesn’t forget — others will be able to see the complaint, but no resolution
Other people with the same problem won’t benefit from the solution

There are many cases where you will have to take a conversation offline due to privacy needs around personal information, or due to legal regulations. Where those things aren’t the case, though, responding to concerns publicly accomplishes two things:

Allows anyone watching to see your company being responsive to an issue (improves your reputation)
The one:many nature of the Internet means that other people with that same issue can see the solution (scales your response)

4. Help customers to help customers

Companies like AT&T (rated highly for social support by Forrester) and BlackBerry (disclosure: client) have been successful at developing highly active support forums where customers interact with and help each other. While the company can step in and address unanswered questions, this solution means that many queries are addressed without any involvement from the company.

5. Build an army of advocates

Your social media activities will naturally let you identify your most active users and your biggest fans. Don’t ignore this potential; create programs to cultivate and build relationships with these people, empower them to become your ambassadors and reward them for doing so.

6. Know your customer

Different people have different preferences for how to receive service; this leads both to tailored interactions with people and to the development of different support mechanisms to suit their needs. People who are pressed for time and just want to get the answer with no frills may prefer quick step-by-step how-tos, for example, while others look for more social interaction and conversation. If you can, take the time (and/or money) to do the research to identify those needs.

Social CRM is a buzz term right now, but even if you’re not ready to go to that extent, there are plenty of tools that let you view your past interactions with people online and begin to move in that direction.

7. Structure for scale

While you may have a core group of support agents conducting support online, look to train and prepare a broader group of employees to step in during critical situations. Few companies are going to be able to take the Zappos approach to empowering employees, but by training outside your team you can be prepared for spikes in activity.

8. Plan strategically

Businesses don’t usually experience flat demand throughout the year. You’ll have seasonality; you’ll have spikes driven by announcements and launches; you’ll have marketing promotions. By knowing when those are, you can plan your resources accordingly – both in terms of staffing and in terms of proactive asset creation (see #1 above).

Scaling support remains a pressing problem for organizations. These approaches can help you to help more people, and in doing so raise satisfaction rates, reduce customer churn and improve your organization’s reputation.

What tips would you add to the list?

Posted in: customer service, social media

Tags: customer service, social media

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Don’t Be Fooled By Last-Click Analysis Of Social Media

11.05.16

Forrester recently published a report entitled “The Purchase Path of Online Buyers.” Normally I’m a fan of Forrester’s reports, but this one left me scratching my head.

The report looks at transaction data from 15 clients of a marketing agency (let’s ignore that built-in bias, and convenient product placement in the recommendations, for the sake of this post) to draw conclusions about buyer behaviour including:

Most buyers do not arrive at a site directly — they come from search or other marketing activities (fair)
Last-click measurement is insufficient – it works for email and search but other tactics receive insufficient credit “as they are typically early in the research funnel and are followed by visits to search engines or email” (fair)
Email was effective during key promotional dates — not surprising, as retailers engage in heavy email drives during those times (think of Thanksgiving or Boxing Day)

However, one conclusion stood out to me:

“Hope for the best, but expect the worst with social.”

(Not surprising that it caught my eye, huh?)

The more I thought about, it the more I was left confused at Forrester’s characterization of the data, especially given the earlier warning about last-click measurement.

Where to begin?

No detail in the methodology

The report doesn’t actually give any detail as to the form the data that was used took. How did they track referrers, especially those two levels deep? Could they identify traffic that came from mobile social apps or from popular desktop apps such as TweetDeck, etc? From the methodology it sounds like they used the agency’s own models to estimate the data, but really we have no idea.

Zero detail on actual social media activities

At no point in the report does it say that (a) the companies were engaged in any sort of social media activities, (b) the form that those activities took (c) the scale and reach that those activities had, or (d) the quality of those activities.

How are we supposed to just agree with the conclusion that social media drove minimal sales if we don’t know what form that social media took, if any? It’s like saying “media relations drove minimal sales” without saying whether the organization actually did any media relations.

Hell, the numbers could actually be a good thing - if I wasn’t engaged in any form of social media but it still drove 2% of my sales, that might actually be a sign that I should begin to invest in it.

Social media objectives vary

In my opinion, brands make a mistake when they consider social media as purely conversion-driven tools. Social media provides numerous potential benefits besides end-of-funnel conversion, including:

Long-term brand-building
Top-of-mind awareness
Improved customer service and retention
Market intelligence and insights

Social media isn’t just bottom-of-the-funnel

Related to the last point, companies should consider the average person’s mindset when they’re using social media.

When you’re using Facebook or Twitter, for example, are you often looking for a link to take me to the best place to purchase something? Probably not. If you’re in a purchase-focused mindset, you’re more likely to be looking for reviews or recommendations from other people.

Once you receive them, maybe you’ll dig around for product information on the recommendation, then look for somewhere to buy it.

For example, today I asked Twitter whether I should buy a LiveScribe pen so I could capture my notes in Evernote:

Sure enough, I got a bunch of points of view in return:

Note: None of those responses offer a way to click through to purchase. Still, even though these results affected my likelihood to purchase, if I were to purchase the pen (which I may), a search engine would likely get the credit — even though search has done nothing to influence my actions up to this point — as I would use Google to find the company’s website.

Forrester seems to be ignoring its own warning that tactics other than email and search may be under-attributed, and passing judgement without fully considering the context.

Social media isn’t one-dimensional

This Forrester report focused on online buying behaviour, so it might seem harsh to criticize it for its single-minded focus. That’s the problem, though — when you’re dealing with a complex, multi-functional set of tools like social media, considering a single dimension in isolation from the others risks writing-off broad benefits across the organization.

This only reinforces the need for a broader focus than an eight-page report can produce – one looking at the effects of integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches to social media. Analyzing an inherently integrated, multi-dimensional set of tools in any other way leads to an incomplete picture.

(Image: talltomz)

Posted in: measurement, social media

Tags: measurement, social media

9Comments

Yeah, Well Your Agency Is Killing Unicorns

11.04.26

Daniel Stein recently wrote an attention-grabbing post over at Digiday entitled “HypeBusters: PR Agencies Are Ruining Facebook.” His basic argument: PR agencies are boring and uncreative, and their attempts at engagement are doomed to fail. The right people to manage Facebook pages are, apparently ad agencies. Guess which he works for.

I’m not going to lie — I’m dismayed at the juvenile back-and-forth that’s going on between different marketing disciplines over social media, with posts like this one or like this from Search Engine Journal previously. Didn’t people ever learn how to play nicely with others?

A tale of false arguments

Let’s start with the particular post in question. The primary issue here is the false dichotomies that are put forward. Why does everything have to be black and white?

Why does content have to be purely either “news, offers and the occasional contest” or “developing a brand’s purpose”? Can’t it be a blend, with some variety?

Where is the evidence that PR agencies can’t “do” creative? Isn’t it possible that agencies of all stripes could be creative?

The reality is that multiple partners are often involved in a successful Facebook effort. We frequently work closely with agencies of multiple stripes, and often help clients to develop governance frameworks so that each can bring their respective strengths to the table across multiple activities within a single channel.

Rather than throw up false assumptions about other agencies, look around. These over-generalizations just don’t hold true.

Shades of grey

I could point to Facebook pages we manage with hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans; or to multiple highly-engaged Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, and use that as evidence you that only PR agencies can do this well.

I could point to examples of advertising agency-driven properties that completely fail because there’s nothing but superficial style over substance, and use that as evidence that ad agencies are ruining social media.

This would fit with the approach of the posts I mentioned above.

I won’t, because neither of these claims are true. This isn’t black and white.

Integrate for success

People who argue that only their discipline can “do” social media and that XYZ discipline is ruining it either have no idea what they’re talking about or are lying to you to get attention.

I’ve argued for a long time that effective social media, conducted over the long term and with actual business value, is derived from the integration and cooperation of agency partners. It doesn’t come from petty bickering and competition — from “my agency type is better than yours” behaviour — between so-called partners who don’t play nicely in the sandbox.

Enough with the attention-grabbing BS headlines and false arguments of superiority, already. Acknowledge that different disciplines can learn from each other, that there’s no “one ring to rule them all” and work nicely with your agency partners to do the best job you can for the client.

You know, cooperate. Like adults do.

Posted in: marketing, pr, public relations, social media

Tags: advertising, marketing, pr, public relations, social media

17Comments

Why And How To Scale Social Business Programs

11.04.14

As time goes on we’re seeing a rising trend toward social customer support, largely driven by three forces:

Companies are observing high-profile brands successfully executing social support programs and want to realize those benefits
As more and more companies engage in marketing programs through social media, customers are using those two-way channels to demand support from companies
We’re seeing more and more examples of crises driven by online activity; social support offers a way to prevent issues from becoming crises

The challenge companies are facing is how to scale that support in the face of massive demand from a customer base that comes to expect quick, direct engagement.

Jeremiah Owyang recently posted the slides from his presentation on scalable social business programs. Some of his key points:

Get into Hub and Spoke and develop a Center of Excellence
- Get away from organic and centralized structures, and develop a hub that can support activities throughout the organization
Leverage community for first tier marketing and support
- Don’t try to just scale 1:1 support – provide the means for customers to support each other then provide second-tier support for those who need it
Integrate both in the customer lifecycle as well as your corporate website
- Think of how you will engage with people at all stages, from awareness through to advocacy, and think about how you can build social functionality into your corporate website (one of the key trends we’ve identified for 2011)
Launch a formalized advocacy program
- Cultivate a group of independent advocates who can transparently engage where they see fit
Invest in Social Media Management Systems before you lose control
- The recent Kenneth Cole and Chrysler mishaps shone a spotlight on the need for controls and education around social media activities. Appropriate systems are a key part of that.

Point #2 is a key one – help your customers and advocates (point #4) to handle a lot of the low-level support for you. That doesn’t mean leaving them unattended; it means providing them with the means to do so – a place to do it and the resources to do so.

Keynote: Invest in Scalable Social Business Programs

These points on scale nicely complement Steve Rubel’s recent thoughts – that, operating in a world limited by time and space, when you can’t expand time you need to focus on expanding your organization’s surface area to scale your activities.

What do you think of all of this?

Posted in: customer service, social media, strategy

Tags: customer service, social media, strategy

8Comments

Three Forces Driving Social Customer Support

11.04.13

We’ve discussed, many times, the importance of the ongoing trend towards the integration of various communications forms in social media – the fact that you can’t just put “social” in a bubble and expect it to perform without support from other media. Awareness of this is slowly growing as social media activities mature within organizations

In the same vein, this maturity will soon manifest in increased integration between business functions. Chief among them will be a growing realization that customer support is a key communications function online.

Marketing and public relations departments have taken the spotlight for many people (setting aside the Dells, Comcasts and Zapposes (fine, whatever, you try pluralizing Zappos) of the world).

Over the next couple of years, as we continue to see companies invest more and more into social media activities, we’re going to see three forces driving the adoption of social customer support – case studies; customer demand and crises.

Force #1: Watching other companies succeed at social support

The Dells and Comcasts have set the bar high, but we’re seeing a proliferation of companies supporting customers effectively through social media.

Rogers (a client of mine in my last job) engaged over 20,000 times with customers through a variety of social channels last year, and is able to measure the results of this engagement. Freshbooks has built an army of advocates through its personable and responsive support team.

There are many other examples, and companies will increasingly look to replicate that success.

Force #2: Consumers demanding social support

While public relations drove an initial wave of social media adoption, and while ad agencies are getting into the game too, their activities will continue to inadvertently shine a spotlight on the need for online support.

Why?

Because they’re using two-way channels. And when you’re using two-way channels, people talk back… not just about what you want to talk about, but about what they want to talk about.

Nestle found this out the hard way, as did Etsy late last year (BTW, Etsy, removing posts “for negativity” is not a good issues management strategy).

So, the more companies engage in two-way channels (even if they want them to be one-way), the more people will demand responsiveness and interaction from those companies.

Force #3: Increased frequency of online issues

The Etsy case is just one example of an issue that blew up online and escalated into traditional media. I continue to see more and more, which leads to the third force driving social support – the desire to avoid becoming a crisis communications case study.

By listening and responding to issues online, companies can nip those issues in the bud. It’s important to remember, though, that if you want your online support to help you avoid issues then (a) you can’t pick and choose which issues you respond to (although there are a variety of ways to avoid having to respond to each and every person 1:1 – more on this tomorrow) and (b) if you don’t fix issues that people identify then listening isn’t enough.

So, there you have it – three forces that are driving the adoption of social customer support. Do you agree? Do you see other forces also at play? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Posted in: customer service, social media, trends

Tags: customer service, social media, trends

2Comments

Why You Should Tweet During a Crisis

11.04.12

Ever have one of those frustrating conversations with your colleagues during an emerging issue, where you’re trying to figure out whether acknowledging an issue online will defuse it or spread it?

You know, the one that goes something like:

A: “Have you seen all the chatter about this issue online? We should get out there and let people know what’s going on.”
B: “No – it’s only a few people – if we post about it more people will know there’s a problem.”

People have a natural reluctance to admit something is wrong. That’s all the more so online, where people can talk back and potentially ask uncomfortable questions. So, unless there’s someone with enough authority to stick-handle a response through the objections, this is often where a stalemate is reached.

Even if you do manage to convince people of the need to communicate, the time it takes to do the convincing often means that you miss the boat on getting your response out there in time for people to see it.

That’s why I was really interested to see a note from Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions on the Social CRM Pioneers group, pointing to some interesting research by Microsoft and Psychster on the effect of companies acknowledging issues via Twitter on the actions and perceptions of customers.

The white paper, entitled “Using Twitter to Reassure Users During a Site Outage,” looks into the effects of a company informing people – or not – of an outage via Twitter, and the varying effectiveness of different approaches to doing so.

The conclusions provide some useful ammunition for those who advocate for a more proactive approach to managing issues via Twitter:

Any kind of acknowledgement online will result in lowered negativity and improved perceptions, and may lead to fewer people calling your call centre
Companies need to think about who posts the information, not just what is posted – a trusted community manager may be better than an executive or an anonymous company account
Companies can improve the effectiveness of their acknowledgements by explaining the nature and cause of the issue

It’s particularly interesting that the study identified that the acknowledgements do more than just change perceptions; they also decrease the likelihood of people calling your call centre.

During a panel on online support at SxSW this year, Frank Eliason explained that he was able to calculate the tangible benefit from his team at Comcast by looking at the cost of their team, the number of people they helped and comparing that to the cost of those people calling their call centre.

Even the most math-averse person can tell that if you reduce the number of people calling you for information, and do it in a cost-effective way, it should be an easy sell.

What’s more, this is a two-pronged benefit – communicating via Twitter can lower your support costs while simultaneously improving peoples’ perception of your company. So, you’re not only lowering costs, you’re also potentially generating revenue in the long-term.

Win-win.

Posted in: crisis communications, customer service, social media, Twitter

Tags: customer service, social media, Twitter

14Comments

Disclosure And Facebook’s Social Plugin

11.03.22

A few weeks ago Facebook introduced its new Comment Box plugin, allowing companies and individuals to connect comments on their owned properties to their Facebook presences.

At the time, while reviewing the business implications of the new Facebook plugin, I wrote:

“There’s lots of potential for confusion, and controversy, when people realize their comments don’t just reside within the protective, search-resistant walls of Facebook. It’s just a matter of time before people start complaining as their comments start unexpectedly showing up on third party websites, or attracting responses from company advocates over on a Facebook Page…

Companies using the plugin on their owned properties would be well advised to make it very clear to users that their comments may be shared over on Facebook”

My colleague Suzanne Marlatt flagged the way the National Post is addressing the issue on its site. Here’s the notice they include on every story (screen cap below):

“Learn more about the new Facebook comments here or tell us what you think: website@nationalpost.com.

If you are commenting using a Facebook account your profile information (job/employer/location) may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the ‘Post to Facebook’ box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to Financialpost.com.”

The first line links to a full page of information on the commenting system.

I think this is a great way of communicating the implications of using the plugin. What other examples have you seen?

Posted in: facebook, social media

Tags: facebook, social media

10Comments

SXSW 2011: Strong on Networking; Less on Content

11.03.17

I just arrived home from South by Southwest Interactive after six days down in Austin, Texas. Given that my voice has pretty much deserted me after numerous days trying to have conversations in overly noisy places, I thought I’d get some of my thoughts on the conference down on “paper” for you.

Networking Mecca

SXSW really is one of the key networking opportunities for people in the social space, and as attendee numbers continue to rise (more on that shortly, the opportunities are ever-increasing.

Yes, there are lots of parties at SXSW, but the people who get the most out of the event are those who use those events as a springboard for smaller, more focused conversations with other people.

While SXSW feels like a giant reunion to me, I tried to push myself out of my comfort zone and meet new people.This resulted in me meeting and begin to get to know people I’ve wanted to hang out with for a long time like Lionel Menchaca, Susan Beebe, Chuck Hemann, Lisa Grimm (way too much laughing ensued there), Aaron Stroud, Eric Schwartzman and Chris Baccus.

However, by forcing myself to meet new people, I was also able to enjoy serendipitous meetings with folks like Kendall Aliment, Roger Dooley (neuro-marketing – fascinating), Patrick O’Keefe, Eric Kim (check out Twylah – it’s very interesting), Avesta Rasouli (founder of Coloft), Christel van der Book (Flipboard) and Andrew D’Souza (Top Prospect, a social recruiting site).

Tips:

Don’t just hang out with people you already know. If you spend the whole time with people you could meet any day of the week normally, you’re missing out.
Book meetings with people you want to meet well in advance. Breakfasts are often best, as days can get hectic and plans for lunch and dinner often change constantly.
Look beyond the big parties. Sure, the big parties can be fun (the surprise Foo Fighters show was a massive highlight for me personally) but don’t spend all of your time at them. Grab a few people, grab dinner and get to know them better.

Size isn’t everything

I heard from a few sources that SXSW this year was about 30 per cent bigger than in recent years. This year it felt too big, with sessions spread throughout the city which provided a disincentive to attend. I think event organizers should consider whether bigger is always better, or whether they should cap the event size to prevent degradation of the event.

Content varies in quality

While SXSW, to me, is primarily about the people, the panels do still provide the main reason that people attend most conferences. Sadly, thanks to the panel picker system – which I think is a broken process that leads to catchy titles and popular people winning the day over interesting sessions – the quality is hit-or-miss at SXSW.

I went to some interesting sessions (Gary Vaynerchuk was again a SXSW highlight, while Angela LoSasso (disclosure: client), Adam Lavelle and Siobhan Quinn did a great panel on real-time marketing) but avoided many others. I’m glad I did, as I heard from many people that they fell more into the “miss” category, chiefly at the hands of moderators failing to keep topics on-track.

The session situation needs to be addressed. Too many people seem to submit panels just so they can get free conference passes, then fail to prepare anything of value to audiences. It must be near-impossible to coordinate so many sessions, but when the sessions at a conference become a laughing stock, there’s an issue that needs addressing.

Tips:

Plan-out your conference schedule ahead of time, so you don’t have to spend time poring over the conference program and missing out on other opportunities when you’re there.
Focus on quality over quantity. Don’t just follow the cool titles; look for people who have expertise in spaces relevant to you and make an effort to attend those sessions.
Decide on the topics you want to learn more about (for me: location-based marketing, influencer identification and marketing in streams – three key trends this year) and focus on them, both in the sessions and outside.
Don’t feel that you always have to be in sessions. As I mentioned above, take advantage of the opportunity to get out, meet new people and make new connections.

No breakout companies this year

Twitter got its big break-through at SXSW in 2007. Foursquare arguably did so a couple of years later. At this point, though, the noise from companies vying for attention is so overwhelming that it’s very hard to break through and get significant attention without either extreme creativity or extreme spending.

This year I didn’t see any big winners, but I would agree with Jeremiah that “intimacy” was prevalent as a trend, with group SMS companies like Beluga and GroupMe getting attention from the early adopters.

Conclusion: Worth it

While I have serious concerns about the ever-expanding size and hit-or-miss quality of the sessions, for me the pros of SXSW still outweigh the cons. The blogger lounge alone provided significant value for me through the opportunity to meet and learn from new people. Meanwhile, the smaller meetings and get-togethers provided the opportunity for me to get to know key people in the space and get in-depth on topics that are most relevant to me.

While it’s easy to get swept away in the hype, if you resist the crowds and clear your own path, SXSW is still a must-attend event in the social space.

Posted in: events, social media, uncategorized

Tags: events, social media

15Comments