Brands that pass the Ronseal test - have nothing to fear from social media

In response to the latest UK customer satisfaction index figures customer facing businesses are being urged to give greater attention to social media or risk a widespread proliferation of damage to their brand.

The following quote from KPMG, sums up the state of the nation “ while British customers have often tolerated poor service in the past, the rapid growth of social media platforms have given rise to a consumer more prepared to voice their discontent with goods or services!”

According to Rohit Kapoor, Capgemini BPO Senior Director and Principal, a recent study revealed 86% of respondents indicated they preferred responses via social media platform. As customer service providers it seems logical you would listen to your customers……

 BUT Too many companies prefer to avoid social media, trying to avoid criticism in a public domain.

So organisations need to raise their game to avoid a public flogging by Twitter, by doing the following:

1)   Hire for attitude. Hire people with service in their soul. The technical stuff can be fixed but a sullen and morose employee who doesn’t want to deal with customers and portrays that lack of engagement is a lot harder to turn around.

2)   By empowering their front line staff to solve customer issues during those moments of truth

3)   By ensuring that the systems and processes of the organisation do not get in the way of point 2 above

4)   By dismantling the functional silos that create a poor and fragmented customer experience

5)   Making themselves easy to deal with and contact

6)   By training the whole organisation on customer service

7)   By ensuring that there is an internal customer service culture

8)   By delivering on their promise to their employees so that they deliver on the organisational brand promise

9)   Having leaders who role model customer centric behaviours

 Do all of the above and your organisation will have nothing to fear from social media.

 BTW – when you embrace social media it’s still really important that you listen to what your customers are saying. But that’s a large enough subject for a standalone blog posting