Social Media Monitoring: Listen to your customers!
No business gets it right 100% of the time, but when things
do go wrong, the most important thing is: how will you respond to put things
right? This can make all the difference to the future reputation of your brand
& the likelihood of getting repeat business.
Community Management: what’s going on?
Our work with brands including TNT, Indesit, Lufthansa,
Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance & Alstom has a strong element of Community Management at its core. This
involves our team of social and search engineering specialists
monitoring the social media landscape using a combination of automated keyword
software, & the old fashioned MK1 human eyeball. Our team works closely
with the Customer Service department as well as the Press Office, Sales &
Marketing to understand the campaigns & events likely to drive the online
discussion topics relevant to the brand.
Online Reputation Management via social media
In the case of a recent global delivery contract managed by TNT on behalf of their customer, a
California based technology behemoth, we were able to track & report on
topics and trends developing in online forums on an hour by hour basis.
These online conversations were invaluable early warning
tools indicating pressure on digital infrastructures & Customer Service
Contact Centres we saw a few days later.
Crucially, our social media monitoring allowed us to plan the social
media & staffing resource TNT needed to effectively service their
customers. In addition, our mutual
collaboration with the marcomms team gave TNT insight allowing them to future
plan areas of their online PR, online
reputation management (ORM), and business continuity & social media crisis
management.
Alongside directly engaging with customers, we were able to
plan marketing and PR messages in
the run up to TNT’s peak delivery period (a 48 hour period spread across
several continents), & to push these messages out through the social media
networks & forums to promote positive messages, pre-empt negative inquiries
& address customers directly with help and advice.
Twitter Engagement
The majority of our customer service conversations for TNT
were handled through Twitter. By
picking up conversations that were already taking place through Tweets, we were
able to engage with the customer using the channel
chosen by them.
Twitter works wonderfully well for customers in this
situation. They send a message in their own time, get a reply directly, and see
an instant audit trail for their customers’ service inquiry as it progresses.
It’s also good news for TNT too, removing strain on the
customer service call centres, TNT’s website parcel tracking website & with
a very real potential to remove
operating overhead from traditional telephone infrastructure.
Positive customer feedback = good search engine results!
It really does go to show that all customers really want is
to be treated like people. If there’s a problem, fine, as long as you
acknowledge me, deal with the issue one to one and show that you’re sorting it
out, 99% of the time I won’t hold a grudge.
In fact, done right, customer service issues can be turned
into an opportunity to positively influence brand perception – a chance to
shine, to show you really do care!
As the hours passed and the customer engagements were
managed, we were able to track the change of topics, trends and sentiment
through page one of Google’s search results & online forums.
What started as an uneasy scepticism, & in some cases an
excited or outraged cry for help, quickly evolved into a cautious relief &
final acknowledgement for the brand of a job well done.
Great news for the people whose issues were sorted &
great to have a bunch of satisfied customers, especially when the search
engines were singing praise for the brand on excellent customer service &
delivery through Twitter. Straight from
the horses’ mouth!
To see a sample of the tweet commentary, click on the attachment on the right, or for more information contact Andy Wood, Strategy Director at
Freestyle Interactive.
See how TNT discussed this campaign on their internal TV channel