Create a Process for Monitoring and Responding
Who owns the dialog? This task usually falls to customer
service personnel, but many organizations are relegating it to the social media
staff. The owner of the dialogue has to be comfortable with technology across a
variety of touch points.
Some organizations allow a wide range of employees to
monitor and respond to social mentions, particularly if the organizations are
trying to create a more personal experience. There are arguments for both types
of ownership, but the only thing that really matters is that the person
responding is trained, level-headed, technology-savvy, and is sensitive to
customers’ needs.
What are you monitoring? You are listening for mentions
about your brand, organization, and company. But this extends to your URL, your
location, your managers, officers, and even employees. Imagine all of the
possible customer touch points, and in all likelihood, someone will be socially
engaging about that experience online.
Go a step further and look at misspellings of your company
name or URL. If you have time, monitor your competitors as well — smaller
organizations, with limited staff, should keep a tighter focus.
Decide on the channels and link them to your service. You
have the basic channels — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google +, Pinterest,
and, perhaps, LinkedIn. However, for many of the monitoring platforms I have
listed above, you can add more than these.
Remember your brand reputation can propagate across the web
from almost any starting point. So the more proactive you are, the quicker you
can guide the conversation.
Develop a hierarchy of responses. I recently advised a large
member-based organization. It was responding to social dialogue and criticism —
compliments and complaints — with a single, canned response to contact the
social manager via email.
The organization is correcting this by implementing a
customer service platform that allows for collaborative customer-specific
dialogue across the organization, and a single point-of-contact response to
that customer. It’s a sophisticated system, good for a large company.
But all organizations, large and small, should implement a
hierarchy of responses to deal with incoming dialogue in an organized and
consistent manner. Part of your online reputation, after all, hinges on a
uniform perception of your customer responsiveness. Using guidelines for
appropriate responses, and how they will be escalated, will keep that
uniformity intact.
Once you have the people, process, and platform in place to
monitor the dialogue, implement basic, company-wide guidelines to assure that
the conversation doesn’t get too heated. Remember, no company ever won an
argument with a customer.
• Think
like the customer. What does the customer actually want out of this dialogue?
It’s presumably a resolution to his problem for which he is holding your
organization accountable.
• Remember
the context. Emotional purchases can result in emotional responses. Similarly,
crisis moments can result in near hysterical responses. A birthday cake
disaster may not seem like a crisis to you, but it may be to your customer.
• Speed is
critical. The longer you wait, the more time you give for that customer to
build up steam. Defuse the situation as soon as possible and monitor your
channels 24/7 if possible.
• Get to
the heart of the dialogue. Sometimes the customer wants only a sympathetic ear.
Sometimes she wants her problem solved yesterday. And sometimes she wants a
discount. Listen carefully to determine what she really wants.
• Respond
like it’s your grandmother. Restate the problem and explain how you are going
to solve it, without inferring that the problem is not as serious as the
customer thinks it is.
• Share the
love. The biggest missed opportunity in reputation management is often the lack
of follow-up when a problem has been successfully resolved. Repost the negative
review if it has positive follow-up. Convert your complaining customer into a
brand advocate by showing her voice is important.
• Just the
facts, ma’am. Don’t let the dialogue get personal or engage in a he-said
she-said type of response. The social listening and customer service platforms
I’ve listed above will provide all the records you need for follow-up. Keep
your policies simple and visible, train your staff, and don’t let the
conversation get personal.
• What you
say can and will be used against you. Unhappy customers can post and re-post if
they feel they’ve been severely mistreated. They may copy and paste (a) dialogue
you’ve had in the past, (b) inconsistent policies on your website, or (c)
photos of the product or service in question. Keep the dialogue factual,
polite, and professional.
• Remember,
it’s an opportunity. Protecting your reputation is also about self improvement.
Problems often occur because of shortfalls in an organization. View each
customer dialogue as a learning opportunity, so the problem won’t happen again.
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