In chapter two of Secrets of Social Media Marketing, Paul Gillin suggests for businesses to “Have a Conversation”. I thought this was a very interesting topic because the thought of customer service becoming digital is such a new idea. Everyone knows customer service has been revolutionized since the dawn of the Internet and social media.
People love to complain. The book mentions that calling customer complaint lines is a thing of the past and people have made their complaints digital. The Internet now makes doing that so much more convenient for consumers to do. Consumers now have multiple outlets to display their unhappiness with services and products. Some examples of these outlets from the reading include personal blogs, social networks, and sites like Consumerist.com. The book says that editors at the Consumerist are required to do little fact checking. How the site works is they expect their readers to see if the facts are right and then correct them if they are not. The site operates like a free market; it will correct it-self. Social media is the new customer service hotline.
The book states that customer service is your weakest link. I would say that I agree with this statement, or that it can be. I think some companies realize that what can separate them from other companies is having excellent customer service. Customer service is something that turns your customers into your repeat customers. This section of the book talks a lot about acknowledging mistakes with social media when they do happen. How you handle mistakes can make or break you. The example we discussed in class about the airline breaking the guitars a perfect example. The company fell short on their customer service and got a lot of bad social media publicity from it.
I think overall when businesses choose to put in the time to interact with consumers via social media it is well worth their time. Companies now have a much higher incentive to listen to what consumers are saying about their products because consumers are no longer willing to be ignored. For the first time in the history of marketing the conversation between consumer and seller is two ways. I think the new interaction is great. If sellers are made aware of what improvements can be made to their products, it will improve increase the demand for the product because it will be tailored to the customers specific needs.
What do you all think? Are social media conversations with companies beneficial to both the consumer and the seller?
It seems that the consumerist is kind of like wikipedia, in that it is up to web-users to edit facts and add info. And what you're saying about social media being the new customer service hotline is right on, so if companies in general are weak in social media, they are going to be weaker (in competition) with customer service. This may not apply to all companies, but eventually it will.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in that it is a lot like Wikipedia. Wikipedia started out not being very trustworthy, so they had to make some adjustments (having their employees police the site) to check for authenticity. I wonder if eventually The Consumerist will have to do.
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