The Social Media Service Issue

When customers get upset, they may or may not contact the company for a resolution. By now, most companies should know that they need to have a reachable presence in the social media world. For those that do, contacting the company is now able to be accomplished through a multitude of ways: phone, email, chat, social media, etc. However, it is important to remember that customers do not always “play fair” when it comes to social media, and in return the CSR must step it up into high-gear.

There are basically two types of people that will turn to taking action on a social media platform. There are those that are truly seeking assistance, and those that just want to vent. The first type is probably the modern techie that knows social media is a way to reach a company for fairly quick assistance, and so they post their issue on a company’s page. Hopefully companies have people in place to quickly deal with them. Then there is the other scenario, where the customer contacts the company and ultimately gets no satisfactory resolution. In response, they turn to social media to vent their frustration. 

The latter scenario is what Luke Hopewell discusses in his Lifehacker article, “How To Salve Customer Service Disasters When All Else Fails.” He states, “If you have been bounced around day-after-day and time-after-time, it’s worth sending out a tweet, making a post on a brand’s Facebook page or just ranting and raving about them in general on social media. The tools these brands use will be able to find your dissent even if you’re not tagging in the brand.” So basically, his suggests that customers who have not gotten a resolution through other means, should just go out and make enough noise until the company responds, continuing, “Once you get a reply from a brand’s social media account, you’ll likely either be directed to a more private live chat service to talk out the issue with a real person, or asked to fill in a web form with your information so that the social media team can get your problem solved.”

This may be decent advice in a way, but some of the more interesting responses come from the comments section in this article. One of the initial comments, from a “Jeffoh” who works in this field of dealing with social media responses, states “In pretty much every single case I've investigated the customer has made some unreasonable demand which we've rejected…and then gone to put their one sided argument online.” He continues, “The interesting bit? Only 1 in 20 customers will actually talk to you to resolve the problem. Websites like ProductReview allow a company to reply, and in every single one I put my email address & ask them to contact me to resolve the issue. 5% of them contact me and things are resolved easily. The rest just want to let off steam.”

Chaosjester, another commenter, disagrees with the article and kind of leans in the direction I felt myself pulled after reading, stating “Having been the subject of a customer’s rant on social media, I totally disagree with this. This is promoting the whole ‘whine on the internet = get what you want’ mentality. Having worked in customer service this is my golden tip that all customers should follow - Be a good customer, get good customer service."

I am not sure the “be a good customer” idea is the ultimate answer, as I think the main weak link in this article has to do more with how the issue was dealt with originally, before it got to the social media aspect. The articles opens with the scenario of a person being “bounced from person to person over the phone before being “disconnected” and left to start the grind all over again,” which led to his suggesting for them to resort to “ranting and raving about them in general on social media.” If they have turned to social media to rant, chances are, the cause is lost. This may not always be the case, but as the one commenter said, only about 1 in 20 is seeking an actual resolution. As someone in the CSR field, you must be always prepared for the other 19.

Image courtesy of Mikumistock - FreeDigitalPhotos.net