Internet companies can be tricky things and don’t exactly have the best track record for customer service (ever tried to get a Facebook problem solved by contacting someone AT Facebook?). We get it. You’re digital. You’re web based. But it’s not an excuse to wall yourself off from your customers.
Case in point. Over the weekend I was dealing with some pretty decent email outages with certain accounts that definitely were not caused by something on my end. Filing a support ticket with Netfirms seemed to have gone into a black hole and I never got a response. What I (and I think a lot of people) didn’t count on or look for right out of the gate was essentially a non-promoted ‘back door’ support medium via their Twitter account. (Full disclosure - I currently host most of my stuff through Dreamhost - but do still use Netfirms)
After a couple of hours not hearing back on my support request, I sent out a tweet describing the problem and within a couple of minutes had a friendly support person on the case. A few @replies (public) and DMs (direct messages - not public) later the problem was solved. I was impressed. By the way, this wasn’t the first time I’ve had a good experience with Twitter support at Netfirms, but it did get me thinking about the medium as a scalable customer service tool.
Using a medium such as Twitter where search is real-time and robust has other benefits as well. When I tweeted about the problem and got a response, another Twitter user chimed in as they were having the same problem. Support can scale if you can fix the issue in public. Posting what was causing the problem and what users need to do for the solution can spread just as fast as the problem did and would save us all a lot of on-hold time.
Companies used to be able to get away with making it difficult for customers to get support (or at least, as a customer there wasn’t much you could do about crap service). Now, those with bad experiences tell google - and for internet companies this can be a big deal.
It kind of boils down to a basic premise of “If something isn’t working - stop doing it. If something is working - do it again.” Simple, right? If your company sucks at phone support, don’t offer phone support - but DO offer kick-ass online support…support so kick-ass that you’d be a fool to complain about not having phone support. It’s not about having phone support vs Twitter support - it’s about having support. Period.
Ideally it’s about having both - meeting your customers on their terms and using the tools they want to use can and will go a long way to building a long term customer. Just ask Zappos. But if you’re going to make users jump through hoops or use a narrow set of channels to get service and support, it better be a great experience for them.
So, what has been your best experience with customer service on the web and with what company? Who has been the worst? Fire away in the comments, please.
I had a great time meeting new folks and re-connecting with friends at the first Utica Tweet Up held over the weekend at the Hotel Utica. I wish I could have stayed longer (had to play an acoustic gig that night at The Devereux) but am looking forward to the next one. Here are some of the folks I met as well as a quick chat I had with @AShort315 who organized the event.
Through sheer luck, I had the opportunity to chat with Hazel Grian and Simon Johnson - who were the creators of the Tweeture. I was amazed that this project was actually built as a context aware and location aware robot that could interact with whoever had possession of it at the time. I’ll let them explain it in much greater detail:
Hazel and Simon are looking for people who had interactions with the Tweeture at SXSW and are asking them to post their thoughts on the project to YouTube. I’ll have mine shortly.
better ideas lead to higher share ratio, regardless of size
Seth Godin had a great post about how a focus on good ideas will always have more value than a focus on getting more fans or followers. Reconciling size versus engagement is something that I know a lot of brands and individuals struggle with online. We all want to be important. We all want to have a million followers. I struggle with this as well. Would I rather have 10 passionate people who digest everything and spread the word than a thousand people who are passive observers? From a long term strategy, yes, but it sure would feel good (at least for a moment) to have a follower / fan count of several thousand.
Without trying to reiterate what Seth says, I’d really like to call your attention to the graph that I grabbed from his post and also direct you there to read his theory (with a little data to back it up) on followers vs. ideas. It’s one of the better posts he’s drafted recently and I think everyone should take a look. Read Seth’s post by clicking here…
There was a really interesting and insightful video from Gary V. about how the explosion of social media has changed customer expectations. He talks about how brands & celebrities are embracing the same social networks that we are, and that there is also now an expectation of interaction buy the consumer. If I think a product sucks and I talk about it, I could rightly expect that someone at that company is at least listening - and may respond.
The same is getting to be true celebrities, CEOs, and the like - John Mayer, Ashton Kutcher, Bill Gates and other top business peeps are on Twitter and (in theory) accessible. No gatekeepers for them in this medium. But can it last? And because of the openness we’re seeing now, will customers grow to have expectations that can’t be sustained?
Andrew Warner over at Mixergy had an interesting post arguing that it can’t. And I tend to agree, but don’t think it will be true for absolutely everyone. We’re in what I think of as an attention gold rush - where the tools are still new enough that barriers and gatekeepers aren’t a huge issue yet. As this builds (and it will) the competition for attention and competition for that conversation will start to exist, just like in every other medium. Gary is a good example of someone who works really hard to engage 1:1 and say ‘what’s up’ to a good chunk of his audience, but with every appearance on GMA, every new tasting with Jimmy Fallon, the audience grows and I’m sure it gets much harder to scale those interactions 1:1.
But, I think it all comes down to how bad someone wants a passionate online community. I get really excited any time someone like Gary (or Andrew, or Chris) responds to a question of mine or a blog I posted. Because it takes real time to respond directly, those discussions make people feel like they are a valued part of the community. Maybe down the road there will have to be another mechanism that can scale better, but at a basic level, I think nothing creates a brand evangelist or a fan like a conversation. Businesses and people will have to learn to better manage those interactions and scale them up, or customers and fans may become disenchanted if these new tools become the 21st century equivelant of fan mail.
Your thoughts? Is there a good way to scale your social interactions if you’re a major brand or celebrity that hasn’t been talked about? Will interactions and expectations consistently increase or will they bell curve? Hit me in the comments…
Here’s my quick take on Mention Map. I think it’s a really interesting way of showing how we’re all connected on Twitter as well as how people are having most of their conversations with.
Internet companies can be tricky things and don’t exactly have the best track record for customer service (ever tried to get a Facebook problem solved by contacting someone AT Facebook?). We get it. You’re digital. You’re web based. But it’s not an excuse to wall yourself off from your customers.
