Are you linking social media with customer service?
Whether you like it or not consumers will be talking about your company and its products –and you need to join the conversation. So how are the UK’s biggest companies bringing social media and customer service together – and how successful are they being?
The 2011 Eptica UK Multichannel Customer Service Study provides some early answers. As part of its comprehensive analysis of how 100 of the UK’s largest companies are dealing with email and web customer service, Eptica surveyed how they were linking customer service and social media in three key areas:
- Did companies provide links to Facebook and Twitter, enabling consumers to find their answers from their peers?
- Was there a customer forum on the company website?
- Were these linked to the customer service system?
The research found wide differences between sectors when it comes to using social media. The full results can be downloaded here, but some key highlights are:
- Fashion retailers lead the way, with 80 per cent providing a link to Twitter and 90 per cent to Facebook
- Consumer electronics companies have realised the vital importance of technical forums to deliver fast answers, with 60 per cent offering them to customers
- The heavily regulated insurance and banking industries have been the slowest to embrace social media – no banks had connections to Twitter or customer forums and just one linked to Facebook
With Gartner predicting that, “by 2013 at least 35 per cent of customer service centres will incorporate some form of community/social capabilities as part of the contact centre solution,” coupled with the fast pace of change in social media it will be interesting to see how things change over the next year.
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