Yeah, yeah, yeah — been long, I know. Busy, you know? Plenty going on, plenty behind us and even more ahead of us — going to be a banner year this 2011 (what? it is? August of 2012? really?) — I meant, this 2012…
So, I had a great chat yesterday with a friend and client, the CEO of FuzeDigital (Chuck Van Court). We were talking about the best way to use Twitter and Facebook for customer service, especially when the data shows it is a poor solution for both customers and organizations: I mean, takes 4,800-7,200 times longer to get an answer on them than via the phone – and usually not as accurate… but I digress.
We were talking about using them social channels as escalation entry points to provide the service you really should be providing via channels that, without giving you painful flashbacks and deja-vu, you spent the past 15-20 years perfecting.
In the middle of the discussion we came to a point where an analogy was necessary. Mind you, this is what I do – I spend the day finding analogies to explain why something works or doesn’t, and what an individual or corporation should do when faced with different situations: this is my bread and butter. I should be able to do this — and, lo and behold I did.
Here is the best analogy / explanation of why trying to provide customer service via those channels is done poorly.
Here is how it works…let’s say you have a problem, any problem. You go to Twitter or Facebook, you complain loudly, and you expect the company you are complaining about to bring their people, processes, resources, and expertise to this new channel (with their many limitations and problems as well as lack of integration into their existing infrastructure) and give you a quick, complete, and comparable solution or answer to what you would’ve experienced through other channels (which they know and used for some time, perfecting the process of delivering solutions) — in far less time.
These are your “expectations”.
Now, let’s switch the scenario so you can understand why that does not work… Let’s say your appendix is about to burst — it hurts and you want a solution; you need to get it out ASAP. What are you going to do? Are you going to go to the hospital and expect them do surgery there?
Or are you going to expect the surgeon to come to your house with their team of nurses, anesthesiologists and other professional (not to mention equipment and infrastructure) and remove your appendix in only five minutes?
Well?
Before you tell me how this is different from business – the surgeon makes their living performing surgery, that is what they do, their business. All they do. However, they know their business is best performed in highly controlled settings with processes, people, and technology that they know how it behaves under different circumstances and how it delivers results.
Customer Service done well also relies in specific processes, people, tools and circumstances to work at peak effectiveness. Yet we insist that organizations should live that behind to cater to our “social tantrums”.
Even if you scream really loud in pain while on the phone wit your doctor, his advice remains the same: go to the hospital and get treated.
Why do we expect different from businesses and customer service?
Well?
(Image credit: Bigstock)
Related articles
- 4 Reasons Why Customers Turn to Social Media for Service and Support (customerthink.com)
- Customer service using social – CRM Evolution 2012 (slideshare.net)
- What’s the ROI of being attentive to your customers? [Infographic] (aaramshoppro.com)
- 6 Tips For Doing Customer Service Over Twitter (sproutsocial.com)
- The Social Media Customer Care Machinery (cloudave.com)
- Why Companies are Using Social Software (enterpriseirregulars.com)
(Cross-posted @ thinkJar)
Esteban,
Interesting analogy, but I don’t believe it fits very well. The more fitting analogy, as unrealistic it is (is it?) would be:
ER staff is trained to send you away with a painkiller and generally deny you even have any problem. You keep on making a lot of noise until finally someone high in Hospital Management hears you, they send the ambulance to pick you up and rush you straight in the OR where a top notch surgery team is already waiting for you.
Is that scalable? No, and I’ve said so years ago. As observers, we probably agree this is not the solution, but as consumers, I bet we both used the “emergency channels” when everything else failed. And we will continue.. until “normal channels” become equally good.
Zoli,
If that is the case, you have poorly trained triage and ER people. Similar to CS, if your front-line, customer-facing people cannot give an answer, the problem is not going to be solved by sending the surgeon to your home – it is solved by changing triage people.
There are very few surgeons, and many triage people — doing the math is simple, no?
Agree on scalability, and that is the core problem we are seeing around Customer Service using Social. Great point.
I am going to start advocating single-channel customer service with multiple onboarding points… sounds like a better strategy for effectiveness.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Hey Esteban:
“I am going to start advocating single-channel customer service with multiple onboarding points… sounds like a better strategy for effectiveness.” I agree.
One more thing: When was the last time a customer got fired for getting a company to do things that do not create sustainable and scalable models best able to help all customers? The customer is king, but the customer is not in charge of how smart businesses operate. Enough of this “the customer is in charge” hooey. People should check out and participate on this topic over on your blog to see what I mean: http://goo.gl/fb/d5L16