“If you sell something you obtain a customer today. If you help somebody you obtain a customer for all life long.”
The Social Customer Service combines, in the customer service, the social network, which communications are public.
It’s new aspect, if compared with a traditional “not social” customer care, is the fact that the conversations are public and could be read by everyone.
This kind of Social service is “required” from those clients who put a very strong pressure on companies, whatever the type of product is.
This pressure can be highlighted through some data:
- each web user has an average of 5 accounts on social networks;
- every minute on 4, sailing on the web, is spent on social networks.
Furthermore, the WeareSocial survey about the European date shows that:
- the 46% of people use the social network in an active way (387 million users);
- the 34% of people use the social networks via mobile tools.
For those who are still wondering why integrating the social network in the customer service, there is a double answer: first of all because in this way you can enforce the relation between the already loyal customers and the new ones through the quality perceived from the social customer service.
The second reason is mainly economic, because the workers of the Social Customer Service can manage from 4 to 8 times more the number of customers against the telephone service and the Social Customer Service costs 1/6 of the Classic Customer Service on the phone.
The speed factor is crucial, as well as the care, the attention and timeliness in solving the problem.
If problems are solved only when the customers are already angry and mad, you are destined to lose them because the effect of the actions will arrive late and customers cannot always be satisfied at best;
it’s a separate discussion when you anticipate the problem or communicate proactively with customers.
The case of an excellent Social Customer Service like the one of the KLM airline company, a pioneer in this field, is very emblematic, and that earlier than many others has adopted a SCS since 2010.
The company, in 2015, stated that each of the 150 employees at the Social Customer Service generates a return of $ 170,000 or $ 25 million a year.
They are surely objective data which show how this could be an efficient way for companies to manage customers but, especially, to be “at the their service” as quickly as possible, with immediacy and giving quality and targeted answers.
This is absolutely the evolution of the normal customer care, where in many cases, you are imprisoned on the phone by a metallic voice “press the number…” to which could often end with “push the customer away…” due to the waiting time, the short answers and sometimes not corresponding to expectations.
Who knows if there will be some automotive company that will try to follow the example of KLM?
Translated by Federica Izzo