We are living in a world where social media reigns king and the experiences customers have – whether good or bad – are immediately voiced on social networks and therefore have a tremendous impact on brands which leaves companies searching for ways to improve customer service. But in reality, it’s not that difficult.
The first thing companies must do to succeed in improving the experiences their customers have in-store, online or over the phone is to actually be social – engage people talking about your company/products, immediately address both praise and discontent, and use social media for what it’s actually meant to be: social. If you reach out and digitally touch a customer and ask about their recent purchases maybe they’ll open up and share ideas for improvement. That’s worth its weight in gold.
And also understand that a majority of customers will express feedback on their experiences either as purchases are being made or within 24 hours after the fact, which almost always occurs on social media.
Aside from being social and proactively engaging customers, it’s important for companies to have the right processes in place to prevent potential issues from snowballing, such as romaine lettuce making people sick or a defective new cellphone. The fact is, problems are bound to happen at some point, and having a clear strategy on how to first detect then respond on social media is critical and ultimately helps companies improve customer experiences in the moment while also staying ahead of issues and rectifying them to reduce customer service issues in the future.
Lastly, we can’t stress this enough: Technology is your friend. There have been helpful Customer Experience (CX) management tools on the market for years but the trend is now moving towards Digital Customer Experience (DCX) platforms that take full advantage of all real-time insights have to offer, and it’s what companies need.
At Soteria Intelligence, we’ve taken things one step further by building DCX and in particular Social Media Customer Experience ecosystems that are powered by deep learning (AI), which allows the platform to learn about customers (likes, dislikes, etc.) and become more intelligent over time. Pretty cool stuff!