Comments on: On Twitter, Customer Service, and Scalability http://blog.networksolutions.com/2009/on-twitter-customer-service-and-scalability/ Small Business tips, interviews and conversations that provide advice and discussion about small business. Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:43:50 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 By: Tobias_B http://blog.networksolutions.com/2009/on-twitter-customer-service-and-scalability/comment-page-1/#comment-3010 Tobias_B Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:41:51 +0000 http://blog.networksolutions.com/?p=530#comment-3010 Social Media Service requires a different internal perspective. Why? Once you start listening, customers expect results on all fronts. From a customer perspective, Social Media opens a door most business are completely unprepared to walk through. The door is that of expectation. Solve my service problem - what else do you have? The answer in most companies is absolutely nothing. Here's why.<br><br>Consumers use Social Media for dialog. This can be described as a one-to-one conversation where there is give and take. When we converse on a small scale, both parties can have influence. In a lot of cases, as with Twitter, these are personal conversations. People generally like to help people. This is the perspective the public has of a lot of social media. Keep this in mind, it is very important.<br><br>Businesses are a culture, not a person. They have lots of moving parts, agendas, and masters. They see dealing with customers as a necessary function performed at best buy a team that might contribute something to the top line, but for the most part, Support is not a profit center.<br><br>Humans using social media expect dialog. On Twitter, like it or not, I hear about people buying a cup of coffee, going to the gym, having a baby or surviving a plane crash. These are personal interactions - they drive the expectation of our experience with the medium.<br><br>Businesses thrive on predictability. They classify, in order to find scale of economy. After the warm and fuzzy support-problem-solved feeling subsides, reality sets in, but an expectation has been set. The business has created a intimate relationship with a customer. A support issue is a point problem and if I solve it, I get a lot of goodwill. Congratulations, the business just set an expectation that the entire company and culture thinks the same way. That every interaction the customer has will come close to that experience.<br><br>The question is, can the rest of the business live up to the expectation? So what are you doing to lower my cable bill? It has gone up every year since I first subscribed. What are you doing to get rid inconstancies between sales people? When I ask for information about services, I get a scripted response read by a person who might be artificially warm. If I call and say I'm changing providers, your response is to suddenly find scores of special deals. Why were these not available to me earlier? I had to say I was leaving. I applaud Comcast for wading into the SM waters, but if you have ever worked in the cable industry, you understand why it will be a cold day before the rest of the company can live up to the expectation set by ComcastCares. <br><br>If you are a business and want to use this medium to improve your chances of capturing and retaining customers, you need to look at your entire culture and ask some very tough questions. This exercise is inevitable. The two choices facing you are 1) your customers will insist on better dialog or go somewhere else 2) technology will evolve and another business will embrace the concept and force a change. Social Media Service requires a different internal perspective. Why? Once you start listening, customers expect results on all fronts. From a customer perspective, Social Media opens a door most business are completely unprepared to walk through. The door is that of expectation. Solve my service problem – what else do you have? The answer in most companies is absolutely nothing. Here's why.

Consumers use Social Media for dialog. This can be described as a one-to-one conversation where there is give and take. When we converse on a small scale, both parties can have influence. In a lot of cases, as with Twitter, these are personal conversations. People generally like to help people. This is the perspective the public has of a lot of social media. Keep this in mind, it is very important.

Businesses are a culture, not a person. They have lots of moving parts, agendas, and masters. They see dealing with customers as a necessary function performed at best buy a team that might contribute something to the top line, but for the most part, Support is not a profit center.

Humans using social media expect dialog. On Twitter, like it or not, I hear about people buying a cup of coffee, going to the gym, having a baby or surviving a plane crash. These are personal interactions – they drive the expectation of our experience with the medium.

Businesses thrive on predictability. They classify, in order to find scale of economy. After the warm and fuzzy support-problem-solved feeling subsides, reality sets in, but an expectation has been set. The business has created a intimate relationship with a customer. A support issue is a point problem and if I solve it, I get a lot of goodwill. Congratulations, the business just set an expectation that the entire company and culture thinks the same way. That every interaction the customer has will come close to that experience.

The question is, can the rest of the business live up to the expectation? So what are you doing to lower my cable bill? It has gone up every year since I first subscribed. What are you doing to get rid inconstancies between sales people? When I ask for information about services, I get a scripted response read by a person who might be artificially warm. If I call and say I'm changing providers, your response is to suddenly find scores of special deals. Why were these not available to me earlier? I had to say I was leaving. I applaud Comcast for wading into the SM waters, but if you have ever worked in the cable industry, you understand why it will be a cold day before the rest of the company can live up to the expectation set by ComcastCares.

If you are a business and want to use this medium to improve your chances of capturing and retaining customers, you need to look at your entire culture and ask some very tough questions. This exercise is inevitable. The two choices facing you are 1) your customers will insist on better dialog or go somewhere else 2) technology will evolve and another business will embrace the concept and force a change.

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