5 Ways To Increase Customer Satisfaction Using Social Media

It costs a company $234 every time they lose a customer. Whether you’re the marketing manager or business owner,  I know you don’t want to be the one responsible for losing the next BIG customer. That’s why I propose you start using social media to monitor and increase customer satisfaction.

I believe that to deliver a superior level of customer service, you need to be able to deliver it through a medium that your customer actually wants to use. As your customers move to other forms of media, it is your job to stay ahead of the curve and be where they are.

And guess what, they’re now on social media. Your customers are on Facebook, their on Twitter, and they’re browsing online forums.

When I think of a frustrated customer, I think of Joe Bloggs, on hold to his Telco which has walked him through 10 minutes of automatic telephone system nonsense, only then… to be put him through to an overseas call center.

Ahhhhhh!!!!

No one likes that experience.

That’s why I’m going to be taking you through five ways you can increase customer satisfaction by using social media.

While researching this topic I found some great research by Maritz Research Inc. They have started researching the power of using social media in their customer satisfaction and loyalty research. Randy Brandt, Vice President of Customer Experience and Loyalty, found that by combining information found on various consumer-generated social media websites with traditional research, they were able to identify two specific action items that have now become top priorities.

This shows that there’s much to learn from your customers on these social media websites.

So, let’s stop only using traditional customer service channels and explore five quick ways you can use social media to increase customer satisfaction.

1. Use Social media to monitor brand mentions and sentiment

Wells Fargo & Company, a financial services company based in San Francisco, CA – uses social media to increase positive sentiment about its brand. In fact, they recently incorporated Twitter as a customer service channel and claim it to be their most effective customer service tool, increasing brand sentiment by 38 percent.

Wells Fargo & Company has even developed its own proprietary system to measure and interpret customer sentiment about its brand. Kimarie Matthews, VP of Social Web Marketing for Wells Fargo & Company, says that when a customer is talking about the company, they take that opportunity to engage with that customer right from the first tweet.

Companies can use social media monitoring tools like Sprout Social to track brand mentions and engage with customers. Not listening to your customers is a common customer retention mistake.

I recommend taking a leap out of the Wells Fargo book and start using social media as a customer service channel. It’s easy to get started. Just setup a Twitter handle for customer support and direct uses to leave messages directly there.

For example, I work for a company called Client Heartbeat, we would use something like, @HeartbeatSupport.

2. Use Social media to communicate prompt and professional messages to customers

I strongly believe we are living in a world of instant gratification. This has positives and its draw backs, but more importantly for you as a marketer, it has lead to your customers having short attention spans and wanting fast responses.

This has spurred on the growth of sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. A customer can quickly go onto these sites, engage with someone or a company, and expect an answer straight away.

Thus, unless you want to end up running a company in the prehistoric ages, you need to look towards using social media as a platform to communicate with customers promptly and professionally.

Tech startups do an awesome job at using social media to communicate with their customers. Often times, they have tighter budgets and since their customers tend to be tech savvy, a lot don’t have phone numbers listed on their sites and instead just direct users to ‘tweet their support handle’.

These companies are so good at getting back quick, accurate and professional responses… the customer actually wants to use this form of communication. With that being said, it’s important you know how to use Twitter correctly.

Here are three quick tips to communicate using Twitter:

• Respond quickly, even if it’s just to say you got the message
• Communicate using a friendly, human voice – don’t try and be a corporate bigwig
• Follow up with customers to gauge feedback on your performance

3. Use Social media as a customer support channel

Let me explain this for you. Your customers are now using their mobile phones 150 times per day. So when they are communicating with companies, what do you think they want to use?

Their mobile!

It’s no longer good enough to just offer a support email address or a support 1800 number. Your customers want to reach you via their mobile, using social media.

That’s why I recommend you setup a designated social media customer support channel. Customers are so comfortable with just tweeting out customer complaints and questions, you can now give them an avenue to reach you, and give you the opportunity to resolve any problems fast.

Reuven Gorsht writes a good piece on this topic over at Forbes.com. “Where five years ago we could tolerate waiting 24 hours for a response from a customer service email, we are increasingly living in a real-time world where we want to know the answer right now.”

I agree with Reuven, there is a big opportunity for companies to use social media for customer service. Now that everything is accessible online through social media, as a company, you now have an opportunity to respond. You can literally solve a problem, instantly, from anywhere in the world

With customers paying less and less attention to what brands say about themselves, being able to engage customers on their terms is a win-win.

“The old model of pushing press releases and blog articles out on social media is having a decreasing effect on customer opinion, while comments from friends, family and other connections are increasing in influence. This presents a unique opportunity for brands to take a different approach and “humanize” the brand by participating in conversations that matter most in the customer experience journey.” – Reuven Gorsht, SAP

To give you an idea of how some big companies are using social media as a customer support channel, a recent study by SocialBakers found Tesco to be the world’s most socially devoted Twitter brand. They’ve accumulated a whopping 75,904 twitter followers, whilst clocking an impressive 65.88% response rate with average respond time of only 81 minutes.

If you need more convincing, a study by Simply Measured found that thirty-two percent of brands now have dedicated customer support handles. The same study found a significant growth in customer service tweets with a 63 percent increase quarter over quarter.

4. Use Social Media to hold regular Q&A sessions

Celebrities are using social media to hold Q&A sessions. A great example was the US President, Barack Obama, jumping on Reddit to answers questions from users.

Companies can do this too, but most the time it is a senior employee or ‘real person’ of the company running the Q&A.  We’ve seen Bill Gates, The Lonely Island, Roger Federer, and many, many more influential people run Q&A’s on Reddit and other social media sites.

I recommend companies do a Q&A to give their customers an avenue to express their concerns, comments or compliments. Often times it’s your unhappy customers that will not give you feedback. So unless you’re doing customer feedback surveys, this is a way you can open up communication listen to your customer. Running a Q&A encourages customer engagement and will help you identify any customer problems.

5. Use social media to empower top customer advocates to respond for you

This is my final recommendation and what I think is the most powerful.

An interesting model is being implemented by some of the world’s biggest companies. It exists and is practiced in the customer communities space.

Let’s take a look at a real example. Over on the HP community site, a member spends upwards of 30 unpaid hours a week responding to queries on their discussion forums. In this case, HP is using their customers to answer HP related questions. They empower their members with community management tools that encourage engagement.

Another great example is the Google Adwords community group. Contributors are encouraged to continue to answer queries and strive to become a ‘top contributor’. Top contributors are recognized as industry experts, which really helps to keep them motivated and keep the community active.

In both cases, these company’s are empowering their customer advocates to assist with customer service. This helps each company to reduce expensive customer service costs and more times than not, offer a better experience.

How can you leverage your community of advocates to help increase customer satisfaction?

Stop ignoring social media as a customer satisfaction channel

Can you afford to ignore social media? I certainly can’t. At Client Heartbeat, I’ve implemented social media monitoring tools to track brand mentions, identify key influencers and answer customer support questions.

It’s still early days but we are definitely seeing the benefits. If you’re struggling to retain customers, why not try increasing customer satisfaction using social media?

Read more of Ross Beard’s insightful posts on customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty at the Client Heartbeat Blog.