“Social media” is the big buzzword humming around business advice articles these days, and is undoubtedly going to be a permanent outlet for small, medium, and large businesses to reach out to the public through their marketing and PR efforts. But social media can play even a much more basic but powerful role in general business operations- a way to provide good ol’ customer service, with new opportunities.
Business owners can choose to embrace this new way of providing customer service, taking an excellent opportunity to perceive and address their customer’s needs, or they can choose to ignore what may being said about them, to their own demise.
Great Customer Service Should be a Goal
When we started our legal company to help people get out of red light tickets by helping them file a trial by written declaration, we had one goal in mind: win cases. As time went on, we realized that just as equally important as providing a great core product and outcome is providing excellent customer service and a helpful user experience.
I think this goal should be one that all companies should strive for: customer service being first and foremost even over providing a great product or service. Why? Because if you leave people feeling like you gave them your best, and that they were important to you as a customer, perhaps they may still recommend others to your business, even if they particularly didn’t care for the product, or perhaps, in our field, even if they didn’t win their case. People send us referrals all the time, even if they didn’t win their case, because we were helpful, and for them, it was worth a shot.
Customer Service in Action
The perfect example of this was when last sunday I was trying to find a parking spot in the streets of Pacific Beach, a little San Diego beach town full of bars, restaurants, tattoo shops, and nearly non-existent parking spots. I rarely come to this area, but I was there to attend a Thanksgiving potluck my friend was throwing at her house.
I drove around and around in the rain looking for parking. I ended up finding the perfect size spot to fit my little Smart Car, right in front of a raging dive-bar that I wasn’t particularly excited about. It was game day and the San Diego Chargers were playing the Greenbay Packers, and fans were going wild inside watching the game. I was hesitant to park in front of a bar overflowing with drunk, enthusiastic football fans, but I was grateful for the spot. Right as I was getting out of my Smart Car, I dropped a big glass bowl of steamy hot mashed potatoes right in the street. Needless to say, being a blonde in a Smart Car in heels on a rainy day with mashed potatoes all over me right in front of Divey Mc. Dive Bar, I had quite the enthusiastic audience.
Stay with me, I’m getting to the point here. Immediately, the manager of the bar came running out to help me. With some cardboard and a box, he scooped up all the broken glass and mashed potatoes in the street while I cleaned myself up. Feeling indebted to him, I asked him if he was the manager of the bar, and promised to send customers his way. I was so impressed with the level of customer service he had shown to me (and I wasn’t even a customer yet), that when I got home I went onto Yelp and wrote a great review about them.
People Will Share Their Experiences
It’s not that I think it’s uncommon or rare for people to write good reviews about their good experiences, but here’s the thing, I would NOT have written a great review about this bar if it hadn’t have been for that manager helping me. It’s not that I would have necessarily written a bad review, but had it not been for him helping me and leaving me with an excellent opinion about the type of people who run their business, I probably would have not recommended anyone to them, simply because I’m not into these type of bars. Their customer service far outweighed the fact that I didn’t really care for their type of establishment. Just because I’m probably not going to go there, I will still refer people there who are into that kind of thing, and much of my referrals are done through social media online.
But What About Reviews That Aren’t Great?
People love to talk online, in fact, even shy people have no problem voicing their opinions and concerns for all to see on the internet, making it even more likely for there to be bad (and good) reviews out there about your business. Isn’t it easier to complain via lots of CAPITALS AND EXPLANATION POINTS!!! then it is to walk into a restaurant and express that kind of emotion face-to-face? As a business, you’ve got to be prepared to respond, because it’s going to happen. You simply can’t leave those kind of comments un-responded to anymore. You’re expected to bring your customer service as present online as you are in your actual place of establishment.
How We Approach (not) Great Reviews Online
I love when our customers post their concerns online. We have a very open door policy with social media, and we don’t restrict comments on our Facebook or Twitter pages. We know we have nothing to hide. If someone posts something negative, we know we’ll address it and do whatever it takes to leave them satisfied. We WELCOME the opportunity, and you should embrace it too.
Yes, although we take pride in providing a great service, we too have had customers post negative things on our page, followed by a phone call from us in attempt to straighten out their concern, and then go right back onto our page to let everyone know that we had addressed their concerns and they were very happy about it. This, I think, is the ultimate goal. You can’t avoid unhappy customers from time-to-time, but if you have it in your business model to do whatever it takes to leave them satisfied, they will respond appreciatively.
People Realize Companies Aren’t Perfect
This is so powerful because people who do their research before doing business with you want to see the good and the bad of what people are saying about your company. People realize that no company is perfect, and if they see the bad AND they see how the company addressed it, they will be confident that they too will be taken care of in any circumstance.
Again, providing customer service via social media is an excellent opportunity to find out what customers need, what’s being said (no longer behind your back but right in front of everyone to see, including you as a business), and best of all: it gives the customer the opportunity to publicly thank you as a business for helping them out IF you respond to them. It’s great advertising of the level of service your company provides, and your presence and your responsiveness speaks for itself.
Amazing how many companies are actually afraid to engage with their customers when problems arise. We see this with complicated voice prompts on customer service lines, where you can never get to a real person. It’s terrible where service is going, and yet this is one of the main things that, if done well, can separate a company from their competition. Social media for customer service, if mastered can send a company light years ahead of their competition, if they choose to embrace and conform to its ways…