Christophe Langlois
IBM’s Guy Stephens published a collection of views from some of the top social customer care leaders. I listed their 35 most striking quotes on social customer service. (updated on 06/09/14)
I found out about this IBM Social Business‘ Guy Stephens white paper ‘Five Years of Social Customer Care‘ on my friend Andrew Grill’s blog.
I’d argue that by essence social customer care should sit at the heart of every social business and digital transformation programme.
That’s one of the reasons social customer service was always my favourite social media programme with the Voice of the Customer.
They both have the potential to profoundly transform your organisation both internally and externally.
Over the years, I helped design and strengthen several social customer care programmes in financial services including Allianz‘s global to local strategy back in 2013, when I was Global Social Media Planner at WPP.
Five Years of Social Customer Care [white paper]
This ‘Five Years of Social Customer Care‘ white paper was recently published independently by IBM Social Business’ Guy Stephens, Social Customer Care Managing Consultant. I invite you to check Guy’s blog and follow him on twitter (@guy1067).
In his report, Guy captured the significant breadth of collective experience from 16 top social business influencers highly experienced in social customer care.
No, this white paper doesn’t include a plethora of stats, insights and other infographics on social customer care’s SLAs, metrics, data integration and other social analytics. Better, it’s packed with a broad range of inspirational points of view, personal stories and words of advice shared candidly by the interviewees.
And that makes it one of the most insightful white papers on social customer care you will find today.
Social Customer Care’s Top Challenges
We will all agree with the contributors: we’ve come a long way since one of the very first major social media crisis back in 2006 when Dell had to recall 4 million batteries. And there is still a long way to go.
Those expert contributions cover most of the key challenges of social customer care:
- ownership and business alignment
- dedicated assets (or not) and range of social media profiles
- capability and training
- listening and data collection
- triage, assignment and escalation
- SLAs and channel redirection
- scale and automation
- self-servicing and customer communities
- data integration and social CRM
- data mining and internal insight distribution
- integrated reporting and standard dashboarding.
Among all the thoughts and learnings shared in the white paper, my personal favourites are those covering the notions of automation and redirection, the challenge of scaling operations and the value of customer communities.
And if I strongly believe that the rise of mainstream personal branding has been positive for both employers and employees, it has also created tensions as far as the customer is concerned.
Today, one of the biggest challenges for brands is the unprecedented level of both access and expectations: anyone can easily reach out to your Senior Executives directly via twitter or LinkedIn. And the more ubiquitous your brand on social media, the more challenging to ‘channel’ customer feedback, positive or negative.
I’d personally be keen to collect the contributors’ views on the following topics:
- KPIs: the challenge of measuring the impact of social customer care on your Net Promoter Score (NPS) which requires a control group, and an automated message triggered upon resolution and aiming to capture customer feedback
- Capability: what’s the right type of employee for the job? What are the top required skills?
- Empowerment: how much do you encourage your staff to take the initiative? Do they have the means to do so?
- Customer identification: how do you positively match your customers with their social media profiles (and vice versa)?
Top Social Customer Care Influencers on Twitter
- Frank Eliason, Citibank (@FrankEliason)
- Richard Baker, Carlsberg Group (@TheIntrapreneur)
- Graeme Stoker, Freelance Digital Consultant (@Graeme_NCL)
- John Bernier, Lubrication Technologies (@BernierJohn)
- Dr Natalie Petouhoff, Constellation Group (@DrNatalie)
- Esteban Kolsky, ThinkJar (@EKolsky)
- Barry Dalton, Strategy& (@BSDalton)
- Colin Shaw, Beyond Philosophy (@ColinShaw_CX)
- Vincent Boon, Standing on Giants (@VincentBoon)
- Wendy Lea, GetSatisfaction (@WendySLea)
- Mitch Lieberman, DRI (@MJayliebs)
- Kate Leggett, Forrester Research (@KateLeggett)
- Dave Carroll, United Breaks Guitar (@DaveCarroll)
- Martin Hill-Wilson, Brainfood Extra (@MartinHW)
- Joanne Jacobs, 1000heads (@JoanneJacobs)
- Joshua March, Conversocial (@JoshuaMarch)
The white paper also includes a foreword from Bob Thompson, President and CEO at CustomerThink Corp. (@Bob_Thompson).
35 Top Social Customer Care Quotes (1-15)
This report is a goldmine of quotes on social customer care. Please find below the top 35 most insightful quotes from those 16 social business experts.
Frank Eliason – Top Social Customer Care Quotes
Frank Eliason is currently Director Global Social Media at Citi. I invite you to read his LinkedIn Influencer posts.
- • “Customer never wanted social service, they wanted to be treated right the first time.”
- • “We are seeing more and more companies insource customer service and find ways to have top leaders closer to the customer. This was always the power of social media!”
- • “We are in a new era that is more relationship driven than marketing or message driven like the 40 years prior.”
Richard Baker – Top Social Customer Care Quotes
Richard Baker is currently Senior Internal Communications and Engagement Manager at Carlsberg.
- • “For me, good social customer service is about empowering customers, not making them a slave to your channel.”
- • “Many organisations still feel they need to control, rather than liberate.”
- • “Treat people as humans. Be nice. Use the right tone of voice. Always try and fix things. And remember – EVERYONE IS WATCHING!”
Graeme Stoker – Top Social Customer Care Quotes
Graeme Stoker is a Freelance Digital Consultant, currently Interim Project Director at Northumbria University.
- • “Social has become not just a service channel but a really important customer engagement tool.”
- • “Five years ago I’m not sure that many of us really appreciated how much of a fundamental channel shift social would be for customer service.”
- • “Retro-fitting traditional service models to a new channel is do-able but building the service model from the ground up around the customer and their preferred channel mix, that is where the real opportunity lies.”
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John Bernier – Top Social Customer Care Quotes
John Bernier is Manager – Marketing Communications and Digital Technology at Lubrication Technologies, Inc.
- • “We had heroes emerge who became our power users. We had newbies, pop-ins, and seasonal employees who got in on the action. We had passion, momentum, and desire…and we had something everyone wants: availability and answers.”
- • “Five years ago I’m not sure that many of us really appreciated how much of a fundamental channel shift social would be for customer service.”
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Dr Natalie Petouhoff – Top Social Customer Care Quotes
Natalie Pethouhoff is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research Inc..
- • “The Cluetrain Manifesto” authors predicted in 1999 there’d be a time when the customer and employee’s voice would matter. That time is now.”
- • “Most companies started in social media with a tactical approach. Creating a Twitter handle and a Facebook page, they said, “Happy Monday and buy our stuff,” and were disappointed in the business results.”
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Esteban Kolsky – Top Social Customer Care Quotes
Esteban Kolsky is Principal & FounderThinkJar LLC. I invite you to check out Esteban’s blog.
- • “The hype surrounding Social Customer Care is making organizations and individuals blind to the amazing waste of resources (people, time, and money) that it has become.”
- • “If you can find the right function and channel combination, it is definitely worth exploring as long as automation is a critical part of it.”
