Social media might be the ultimate customer service tool. Businesses and brands, and their highly paid consultants, can listen to their customers, research them, how they behave and act. Social media allows companies to engage with their customers, both future and current ones. It also enables them to finalize the customer experience.
Customer service is making a huge comeback. The fact that it needs to says a lot about our culture and where we’ve been. Cellular phone and cable companies, airlines, big-box stores; they all could use a revolution in the way they handle their customer service. No longer does a day go by without someone influential gritting their teeth publicly, often explicitly, about some horrible customer service experience on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or all three? And for better or worse, social media loves customer service disaster stories. (See: Kevin Smith)
So at the same time that everyday citizens are using tools to actually talk back, to criticize, to praise, to thank or to warn, the companies and brands and businesses on the other end of the spectrum are failing. They aren’t listening long enough or hard enough. They aren’t engaging authentically and honestly. There are examples of great customer service programs, of crises turned into massive opportunities. But when you are managing a crisis, instead of getting it right from the get-go, you’ve already failed.
Outrageous Customer Service Requires Vision
Getting customer service right is a sophisticated mix of understanding your business, your service and/ or product, the wider world you operate in (competition and peers) and the customer. It is on this last front that many companies just don’t have the vision. They can’t see their customer. They cannot peer into the lives of their customers. Especially now that your customers lives are becoming more and more public. Are you doing your research? People are EASY! They broadcast what they want, how they want it, and what they’ll do to get it. And they’ll tell you a whole lot more.
When you can’t see your customers, you can’t anticipate what they want and more importantly, what they WILL need.
Having vision requires a little bit of fortune-telling. It’s a roll of the dice. Many companies decide not even to step up the plate and try their hand at it. They’ve made the choice that sitting back and waiting for things to happen is more important than experimenting and failing. They’ve made the wrong bet.
Right now we need companies to experiment. Experimentation with failure is still better than sitting the game out. If you experiment, people will notice, people will talk. They may hate it, they may love it, but they will appreciate it when brands and businesses get down and dirty. And if you experiment, you’ve got a story to tell. And my how we all love stories. Even the ones with sad endings. But sad endings lead to new beginnings, and your story can begin anew.
Why Vision Is So Important
The ability to see into the future of your business is still the number one thing I look for in brands and businesses. What are your plans, what is in your future? What products are you developing? Do they speak to today’s needs, or are they anticipating what I will need when I wake up tomorrow?
The service you provide: is it getting better? What is the endgame? How do you finalize the customer experience today, and how will you do so tomorrow? I am changing everyday; my needs and expectations, my desires, my preferences. What are you doing to listen to my evolution as a customer?
Businesses and brands are reactionary. They respond to events. They don’t break news. I want businesses that have the foresight to plan for the future, and for what I’ll be wanting in 3 months. Break the news, tell me what you are going to offer, and then explain to me the context of why I’ll need it. Market me damnit! But do it wisely. Market me in a way that lets me know you’ve got me in your sights. That you’ve been listening to what I’ve been broadcasting. WE are all public now. We are telling you where we go, who we hang out with, where we spend money and how. We really love telling you what we don’t like.
Let me know you have developed the vision to think about me, your customer, the one who is critical and sophisticated, but who when treated properly will respond with all the love and kindness and evangelism that you want out of ALL of your customers.
Image Source: Team Dalog on Flickr
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