When the telephone rings (or however it notifies you) – and you know the call is coming from one of your customers, you answer it.
Then why do companies establish a presence on the social networks and let comments and tweets go unanswered?
I don’t know either.
I do know that your customers expect you to be available to take their “call.” If you are a small business they recognize that it may take you up to 12 hours to respond. If you happen to be a corporation, the standards are much higher – with the expected response time being a matter of minutes.
Engage
Yesterday I shared my reasons why I blogged for 5 years on TypePad – and why I recently moved over here to WordPress. One of the key reasons for sticking with TypePad for so long was the fact that they engaged with me – especially because they responded to my query on Twitter about the differences between TypePad and WordPress.
In fact, the response from TypePad’s community manager offered up the opportunity to connect on the telephone. I took her up on the offer, achieved a greater level of confidence in TypePad, and willingly spent more money to take advantage of services that I was previously unaware of.
Solve Problems
Customer service is a process of solving problems – with products and services, and with helpful tips and advice. I’m not an expert in customer service. But I do know after 10 years in corporate sales, and 20 more running a landscape contracting business, that most customers are very reasonable – they just want a response.
Acknowledging your responsibility to your customer used to be a phone call. Before long an email was sufficient. Now it’s a Facebook page or blog comment – or a tweet.
Stay Connected
The good news is these new methods of communication take a minimal investment of time, especially if you take advantage of services like Postling to monitor your social media channels. Is your business using them?
It’s easy to over think this, so don’t. Just know that communication channels are moving online. Why?
Because that’s where your customers (and competitors) are spending more of their time.
You need to be there with them – solving problems. It takes some effort, but a lot less than is necessary to earn the loyalty of new customers.
It’s worth the effort, don’t you think?
Feel free to leave a comment below – and please share this with your social community on Facebook or Twitter.
Until tomorrow, Jeff
Great post! You say it all in a nutshell when you write: …most customers are very reasonable, they just want a response. Although I may change that slightly to: they just want their problem solved.
Businesses should love when customers bring problems to you. That usually means that it’s important to them for your business to be available to them in the future. They WANT to do business with you. But they also want you to change or fix the things they aren’t happy about so they can feel good about continuing their relationship.
By the way Jeff, I mentioned this post in the comment section of @wordsdonewrite blog post today. Here’s the link. I thought the two blog posts were supportive but with a different take. http://bit.ly/maLH7h
Cheri – Thanks for the mentioned. Good point – it service only starts with the response, but some don’t even get that far – so it’s a HUGE first step.
I did stroll over to your blog and left a a comment
Jeff
Thanks for sharing. Now, I got an idea.
Great post. also I think many customer feel closer to business when they get a response on twitter or facebook. I think customers see business almost as their friend in this situation. Also they feel closer to the business since all they need is to make a few clicks of the mouse to contact them.
You nailed it. It’s all about humanizing the business – being a friend.