PLEASE of customer service

https://www.google.com.gt/search?q=steps+to+follow+for+great+customer+service&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS717US717&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=662&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7-p6_levRAhXF8CYKHeofDk4Q_AUIBigB#imgrc=sPC3gSWO1_v0BM%3A

The Fish Philosophy

The Four Practices of The FISH! Philosophy

Be There

Be emotionally present for people. It’s a powerful message of respect that improves communication and strengthens relationships.

Play

Tap into your natural way of being creative, enthusiastic and having fun. Play is the spirit that drives the curious mind, as in “Let’s play with that idea!” You can bring this mindset to everything you do.

Make Their Day

Find simple ways to serve or delight people in a meaningful, memorable way. It’s about contributing to someone else’s life—not because you want something, but because that’s the person you want to be.

Choose Your Attitude

Take responsibility for how you respond to what life throws at you. Your choice affects others. Ask yourself: “Is my attitude helping my team or my customers? Is it helping me to be the person I want to be?

https://www.fishphilosophy.com/fish-philosophy-story/

Customer Success: Best Practices for Client Management

Customers Relations: Best practices and mistakes to avoid! - Alexis Lewa...

Customer Relationship Management

Best Practice - Ensuring Optimal Customer Service and Relationship Manag...

Best Practice - Ensuring Optimal Customer Service and Relationship Manag...

BEST PRACTICES: CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

That few companies are achieving the results they expected from their investment in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is not news. That most companies continue to invest in CRM without a roadmap for increasing shareholder value or even for forging closer customer relationships is also not surprising, since there are few best practices in CRM for companies to follow. In fact, based on our own research and consulting, and a recent examination of best practices in 35 Canadian and U.S. corporations, we could not find one company that excels in every dimension of CRM. However, we did find examples of one or two specific best practices in individual companies. This article discusses these selected best practices, which, we believe, companies should consider when trying to improve the performance of their CRM initiatives. It also discuss the changing role of senior managers that are developing a relationship-oriented organization

A definition and a vision
A CRM plan

• Technology: the technology that supports CRM.People: the skills, abilities and attitudes of the people who manage CRM.

• Process: the processes companies use to access and interact with their customers in the pursuit of new value and mutual satisfaction.

• Knowledge and insight: the approaches the company uses to add value to customer data so that they acquire the knowledge and insight needed to deepen the relationships that matter.

Strategies and tactics

• Processes

• – Customer collaboration to jointly plan and create new value, differentiated by class of customer.

• – Collaboration with distribution channel intermediaries and suppliers to achieve the value each end-customer wants.

• – Embedding business rules into CRM databases so that customers’ behaviors trigger appropriate actions

• Technology

• – Integration of the customer’s various touch points with the company

• – Development of a single, real-time view of each customer

• – Creating an ability to sell when the customer is ready to buy, and knowing what to offer and how to appeal to each customer

• People

• – Recognizing that employees have different needs just as customers do, and trying to provide each with the value they want from the company

• – Creating a self-serve capability to enable employees to take more control of their careers and career development, including what and when they learn

Measurements

• Account management costs

• New product concepts developed in collaboration

• Costs or time saved in new product development

• Savings in new account acquisition from customer referrals

• Costs associated with inventory levels (finished goods works, in process, raw materials, etc.)

• Reduced costs of marketing such as co-marketing

• Reduced infrastructure costs such as from shared investments

• Costs of managing customer communications, customer support, complaints, feedback and restitution (payments for returns or errors)

• Amortization of infrastructure costs such as call centers and Web-sites

Managing and delivering CRM

• the amount and nature of customer data and the processes by which value is added to the data.

• how companies compete, especially for those firms that use CRM to compete on scope.

Implications for senior managers

• What is the firm’s vision for its relationships with all stakeholders, in addition to key customers?

• What new capabilities does the organization need to achieve the CRM vision?

• How will tomorrow’s CRM company be structured?

• What roles must management take to implement the vision?

• What measurements must be used to assess CRM performance?

• How should all stakeholders be aligned to create the value end-customers want?

There are many definitions for CRM, and best-practice companies adopt one that is shared across the organization. Otherwise, the very term “CRM” will conjure up many things to different people and lead to confusion. These companies see CRM as a series of strategies and processes that support and execute a relationship vision for the enterprise. In their eyes, CRM is a series of strategies and processes that create new and mutual value for individual customers, builds preference for their organizations and improves business results over a lifetime of association with their customers.

With this definition, an organization can focus on developing the only asset of the enterprise that matters in the long term, progressively deeper relationships with valuable customers. By sharing the definition, they can put the customer first and avoid sending their staff into cycles of interminable CRM programming.

These organizations then create a vision for how CRM will change their companies. Some develop the vision according to attributes that are important to both the customer and the company. These include attributes that affect customers’ perceptions of value, how they can bond with the organization, product and company preference and purchase intent.

This vision sometimes changes as the firm gains experience in CRM and as technology makes new things possible. For example, at a major Canadian bank, the vision has evolved. Initially the vision was associated with the development of customer information systems. Personnel then identified five components that the firm built in stages to implement key aspects of the vision. These components were associated with developing a complete, real-time, single and accurate view of each customer. Simple though it sounds, it took several years to accomplish given the sheer scale of the enterprise. In this example, the vision was initially conceived in terms of a strategic capability, that of customer information. Today, the vision is more focused on the delivery of differentiated value propositions through products to customers. This illustrates that once best-practice companies put a strategic capability in place to enable CRM, they tend to modify the vision to use the capability for customer bonding, a learning relationship and competitive advantage. Strategic capabilities are even more important than specific strategies in best-practice CRM companies. We discuss this below.

At the outset especially, best-practice companies develop their CRM plans in terms of strategic capabilities rather than strategies per se. This helps to ensure that the company can adjust to a wide variety of marketplace and industry changes without affecting the main thrust of the plan. For example, we recently reviewed the plan of an organization considering what to do with CRM in the wake of the events of September 11. Prior to our involvement, it was debating the merits of various programs while the key strategic capability it needed – in this case, developing an ability to listen and respond to customers in a timely manner – was not identified nor discussed.

Increasingly, best-practice companies base their CRM capability plans not just on technology but also on developing and focusing organizational capabilities in other areas such as CRM processes, people and knowledge/insight. Indeed, we have found that best-practice companies do not first adopt a CRM technology solution and then build their CRM initiatives around it. Rather, they develop a more balanced approach to conceiving and implementing CRM strategic capabilities as described in Diagram 1. There are four main CRM strategic capabilities:

The scale and scope of these capabilities are affected by factors such as the core customers on which the firm has chosen to concentrate, the leadership and culture of the organization, the channels the company uses for stakeholder communications, transactions and logistics and the firm’s business model, strategy and structure. Diagram1: Balancing CRM Strategic Capabilities

Many companies have CRM strategies that seek to develop additional sales from certain existing customers. Best-practice companies do this, too, and also have strategies that focus on the enablers of the end-customer relationship. For example:

Many companies measure the return on investment (ROI) of their CRM programs. Indeed, firms often embarked on a CRM journey because the performance of specific programs could be measured with more assurance than their traditional means of promotion. Best-practice companies know the ROI for each of their programs and use this knowledge expeditiously. For example, a major casino understands guest spending and can rapidly relate this data to the investment the casino made to attract the guest. This leads to new offers affected by the amount the guest spent (lost) and the casino’s investment in the guest. Measurement allows the casino to limit “free ridership,” the provision of offers to visitors who would return anyway without any incentives.

As this example suggests, best-practice companies make use of measurements to allow them to manage customer behaviors. Thus, customer profitability, which today is often measured at the gross margin level, is increasingly allocating costs below the gross margin line to individual customers. For instance, costs per customer such as those below are increasingly being considered to arrive at a more detailed assessment of customer profitability:

Measurements such as these also help a company decide how much to invest to keep existing customers and how much to spend to attract new customers. This is effectively changing the paradigm in media spending from considering costs in dollars per thousand people to dollars per priority customer.

In addition to the measurement of behaviours, best-practice companies measure attitudes. For example, customer satisfaction and favourability (purchase intent) are measured. For business-to-business purchase decisions, customer satisfaction measurement occurs across the enterprise and scores are weighted to arrive at an overall level that allows satisfaction levels to be compared over time. Best-practice companies also understand their performance compared to other suppliers for that account. They track their share of each customer’s spending. By using data such as these, companies are beginning to target specific competitors to transfer customer share one customer at a time and thereby to gain market share. More generally, best-practice companies develop selected competitive measures to help ensure that the performance of their C RM initiative is leading to superior customer relationships.

For most companies, today’s CRM strategies reflect a material shift in historical marketing and strategy. And, because organizational structure follows business strategy, CRM impacts organizational design. Two areas have a particular impact on the structure of companies:

Most companies obviously see solid financial data as important for management, leadership and control. They have a financial department and a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with custodial responsibility for these financial data, including security and management, and the processes by which value is added. Increasingly, companies are coming to believe that customer data are as important as financial data. Some best-practice firms are establishing custodial responsibility for customer data and value-added processes in the same way that they secure and manage financial data. This responsibility includes managing the customer data warehouse and the approaches that add value to customer data. It can also include mechanisms for providing services from a centralized department to the lines of business in decentralized companies.

Companies competing on scope change their structure frequently as they begin to sell what customers want rather than what the firm has made. This leads some companies to distribute the complementary products or services of others, including customers and competitors, and to sometimes sell their own products and services through others. This can be a marked departure in strategy for those companies that built their businesses through economies of scale. Associated with these changes are new roles and responsibilities for an expanded array of stakeholders and how they interact in the value chain. The challenge for organizational design is to accommodate these changes without disrupting the firm’s existing business.

Because the company competing on scope often has fewer but more important stakeholders, CRM companies are beginning to organize around their stakeholders to create the value each wants. For example, professional services firms have client-service teams for their most important clients with representatives of both the firm and the client on the teams. In another example, a major logistics company has established customer teams that bring together the various processes by which the company interacts with its priority customers. Members of the customer teams are drawn from many areas within the firm, such as marketing, sales, advertising, research, operations and finance, as well as their counterparts from the customer. In this case, the management of the customer team falls to sales, which manages all the processes by which customer value is created – an obviously very different role than the historical role of the sales department.

Managers now developing a stakeholder-centric focus for their organizations may find that they now have additional roles and responsibilities. These can include:

1 Providing a compelling vision to keep the organization focused on CRM strategically, tactically and in real time, continuously and mutually with key stakeholders.

2 Bringing all customer data together in a single location, aligning processes among stakeholders in the service of the end customer, and smoothly integrating the CRM activities of other executives, lines of business and functional areas.

3 Selecting among the often competing requests for projects, funds and people, in accordance with the CRM vision, such as the issue of who is promoting the project, what technology can accomplish or whether new or existing customers merit the most attention from CRM.

4 Helping management and staff at all levels to understand CRM concepts and the firm’s vision for CRM, as well as communicating customer, market and profitability data to describe the firm’s progress as it proceeds on its CRM journey.

5 Setting expectations to help individuals and groups align their performance with the goals for CRM. Many companies have a large variable component in their compensation structure, for example, which can reward behaviours that run counter to CRM principles. People need to know the link between CRM and their own success or the initiative might be seen as just another program. Among the many aspects of change management organizations typically employ are the recognition of individual and group achievements, and case study successes.

6 Ensuring that a sufficient flow of people, time, money and knowledge goes to the CRM areas that need these resources.

7 Ensuring that that financial and operational controls are in place to monitor and improve customer performance and that any trust that might have been extended to any stakeholder under the CRM vision is not abused.

Few firms today are realizing the potential from their often-considerable investments in CRM. In part, this is because it is uncommon for management and staff to embrace CRM as a vision for how the business could be. Seen only as a means to generate more short-term sales, CRM can be little more than a means to efficiently interact with chosen customers with appropriate value propositions. This is not a bad start but there is much more to be accomplished from looking at the best-practices of those companies that have a broader view of CRM and have set out to answer some important questions, such as:

Perhaps no company has yet achieved the full potential for CRM. Considering best practices from a number of firms suggest that opportunities remain for all organizations to achieve better results and deeper relationships with CRM.

http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/best-practices-customer-relationship-management/

10 best practices to improve customer support

Las 8 mejores prácticas para la gestión de la Experiencia del Cliente

La experta Laura Bassett menciona algunas recomendaciones para mejorar la experiencia del cliente, con ejemplos de diversas empresas que lo han logrado

Por Mundo Contact | 15 julio 2013 | Actualidad Customer Experience, Articulos Contact Centers, Articulos Customer Experience, Customer Experience

Por Laura Bassett *

El servicio al cliente se trata de responder inquietudes en forma correcta la primera vez. Suena simple, pero no siempre es sencillo y es posible que sea necesario replantear su estrategia de experiencia al cliente y adoptar nuevas y valiosas tecnologías.

SafeAuto Insurance Company se caracteriza por sus divertidos anuncios publicitarios e ingeniosas promociones, pero cuando se trata del servicio al cliente, no bromea. La empresa tiene una fuerte orientación al cliente y está comprometida a prestar un alto nivel de servicio y eficiencia operativa. Sin tener agentes externos que vendan o presten servicio de SafeAuto Insurance, la empresa depende de su contact center en múltiples localizaciones para gestionar las ventas, reclamaciones y servicio al cliente.

Con las soluciones adecuadas para su centro de contacto, SafeAuto acumuló estos resultados:

• Aumento del 14% en la ocupación de agentes (utilización).
• Reducción del 48% en el tiempo de espera máximo para la persona que llama.
• Llamadas más breves, manejadas de un modo más eficiente.
• Ahorro de costos de entre un 10 y un 15%.

Obtener nuevos clientes es considerablemente más costoso que mantener los que ya se tienen. Y los clientes satisfechos son los que se mantienen fieles. De acuerdo con una encuesta realizada por callcentres.net en 2011, el 83% de los encuestados dijeron que realizarían más compras en empresas con las que fuera más sencillo hacer negocios. Pero las necesidades de experiencia del cliente están cambiando rápidamente estos días, con las redes sociales, los análisis y los nuevos dispositivos y tecnologías que rediseñan el panorama. He recopilado consejos de empresas que reciben continuamente altas calificaciones por la experiencia del cliente que brindan, y he podido identificar las 8 prácticas más adecuadas.

1. Construir relaciones

Las mejores empresas saben que lo importante no es únicamente solucionar problemas, sino establecer una relación duradera con los clientes.

Los contact centers pueden imitar este enfoque con el uso de programas de marketing de venta cruzada y basados en análisis. Estos programas implican la utilización de datos históricos y en tiempo real para sugerirles proactivamente a los agentes los productos y servicios que pueden interesarle a los clientes individuales. Cierre el círculo recompensando a los agentes por vender las soluciones más adecuadas, en vez de las más costosas.En sus tiendas minoristas, Apple está abocada a la tarea de hacer amigos. Los empleados realmente intentarán “venderle algo menor” que aquello que tenía pensado comprar, en un esfuerzo por conseguirle el producto de menor precio, menos complicado y que hará lo que usted necesita. Y a decir verdad, a todos nos gusta obtener lo que queremos por menos de lo que esperábamos pagar. El enfoque de Apple, según afirman, da como resultado menos devoluciones de productos, mayores tasas de venta en servicios complementarios, menos problemas de compatibilidad frecuentes y un desgaste muy bajo en los empleados.

2. Integrar los canales de soporte

Las nuevas tecnologías para los consumidores hacen que sea aún más importante brindar soporte a los clientes de un modo coherente. A medida que añade SMS, chat de texto, chat de video y canales de plataforma móvil a su equipo, es importante controlarlos. Las herramientas de integración entre diversos canales pueden parecer abrumadoras; pero la alternativa es una incoherencia en la experiencia del cliente, que puede tener como resultado un costo considerable para su empresa.

Salmat, el proveedor más grande de contact centers tercerizados de Australia, está actualizando la tecnología de sus 35 contact centers con el fin de convertirse en un proveedor de servicio al cliente ‘omnicanal’. Salmat, que maneja más de 100 millones de llamadas telefónicas de entrada y salida al año, necesitaba interactuar con los clientes, ya fuera que estuvieran en Twitter, Facebook, por SMS, correo electrónico o teléfono, comenta su director ejecutivo, Grant Harrod. “Los consumidores no necesariamente seleccionan el canal que usted desearía que utilizaran para comunicarse; ellos seleccionan el canal con el que desean comunicarse con usted”. Y cada uno de estos canales “tiene que ser absolutamente coherente”.

3. Hablar con los clientes en tiempo real

De acuerdo con un informe de 2012 de Frost & Sullivan, los consumidores por gran mayoría terminan intentando hablar con un agente de verdad y están más satisfechos después de las interacciones en vivo, ya sea por teléfono o chat. Imponerle a los clientes canales de autoservicio puede mantener sus costos controlados a corto plazo, pero a largo plazo, le puede costar en cuanto a retención y oportunidades de venta cuando no se utilizan correctamente.

Palm Coast Data se encarga de las suscripciones y la distribución de 500 revistas a 45 millones de suscriptores. La actualización de tecnología les ha otorgado dos funcionalidades nuevas a los 200 agentes del contact center de Palm Coast que trabajan en las instalaciones y a un creciente número de agentes que trabaja desde la casa: la capacidad de chatear con los suscriptores de las revistas (normalmente dos a la vez) y realizar devoluciones de llamadas programadas a clientes cuando tienen tiempo libre. Con ello se ha aumentado la productividad de estos ‘agentes combinados’ entre un 86 y un 98% y se ha aumentado la satisfacción del cliente, según informa la empresa.

4. Orientar a los agentes para que tengan un buen desempeño

El desempeño de los agentes es la piedra angular de un buen servicio al cliente en un contact center. Instruya a sus instructores, dé retroalimentación específica e invierta en herramientas de formación de próxima generación para asegurarse de obtener el máximo rendimiento de su personal. Recompense a los agentes que demuestren el mejor desempeño. Ayude a aquellos que intentan mejorar.

Una división del banco HSBC en el Reino Unido, First Direct, no tiene una red de sucursales físicas. Los clientes acceden a los servicios en línea o a través de aplicaciones móviles o fijas. Fue votado como número uno en servicio al cliente en una encuesta nacional por cuatro años consecutivos. La capacitación y ayuda a los agentes es fundamental para la misión del banco de “ser pioneros en brindar un servicio excepcional”.

Sabiendo que los empleados con más antigüedad prestan un mejor servicio en general, First Direct apunta a mantener contentos a sus empleados, y la formación continua es fundamental para este enfoque. Cuando se contratan empleados nuevos, estos pasan seis semanas en capacitación. El 65% de ese tiempo se emplea en un entorno de aula diseñado para funcionar con todos los estilos de aprendizaje, y el 35% se dedica a la atención de llamadas en el call center con instructores especializados. Mientras trabajan en First Direct, los empleados reciben formación personalizada para que puedan estar motivados y desarrollarse como personas. Todo el personal debe volver a asistir a las capacitaciones regularmente y se lo responsabiliza por sus propios estándares de servicio personal.

5. Otorgar capacidades a los empleados y hacerlos participar

Desarrolle una cultura donde los empleados se sientan cómodos iniciando conversaciones y escuchando a los clientes en lugar de solo responder preguntas lo más rápido posible. De este modo, el desgaste de los agentes disminuye y la satisfacción del cliente aumenta.

El minorista de calzados Zappos.com es un muy buen ejemplo. Su declaración de misión establece que “¡Servicio al Cliente no es solo el nombre de un departamento!… Hemos alineado la organización en su totalidad con una sola misión: brindar el mejor servicio al cliente posible. Dentro de nuestra empresa, a esto lo llamamos nuestra filosofía para CAUTIVAR al cliente”. El call center se encuentra en la oficina central de la empresa, y los empleados comienzan a desempeñarse en la empresa con cuatro semanas de capacitación como representantes de servicio al cliente. Posteriormente, los empleados del call center tienen otras tres semanas de capacitación, para un total de siete semanas.

Después de toda esa capacitación, Zappos.com confía en que sus empleados se portarán bien con los clientes.  No leen indicaciones en pantalla y no se les pide que las llamadas sean breves. Esto no parece ser algo lógico, pero funciona. Las historias de personas que reciben ramos de flores por condolencias, productos gratis y membresías de por vida al programa VlP se difunden como virus en internet y dan como resultado clientes profundamente leales.

6. Centrar los parámetros de medición en el cliente

¿Cómo mide el éxito? No solo recompense a sus agentes por la velocidad. Recompénselos por resolver el problema del cliente en un solo contacto (resolución en el primer contacto) y por obtener una alta puntuación en relación con la satisfacción del cliente.

Las tiendas por departamentos Nordstrom se han destacado desde hace mucho por su excelente servicio, y los clientes hablan mucho acerca de esto. Durante muchos años, el Manual de los empleados de Nordstrom fue una tarjeta de color gris de 13 cm por 20 cm, aproximadamente, que contenía solo 75 palabras que detallaban la breve y genial filosofía de la empresa: Le damos la bienvenida a Nordstrom. Nos complace tenerlo en nuestra empresa. Nuestro objetivo número uno es brindar un excelente servicio al cliente. Propóngase altos objetivos en lo personal y en lo profesional. Confiamos firmemente en su capacidad para alcanzarlos.

Reglas de Nordstrom. Regla N.° 1: Use su mejor criterio en todas las situaciones. No hay ninguna otra regla. Siéntase libre para hacer cualquier pregunta que tenga a su gerente de departamento, gerente de tienda o gerente general de área en cualquier momento.

La empresas deben convertirse en proveedores ‘omnicanal’’, capaces de interactuar con los clientes de la manera en que éstos lo prefieran.

Probablemente usted no pueda reducir su manual del contact center a 75 palabras, pero ¿tiene espacio para la simplificación? ¿Para centrarse en los indicadores clave de desempeño en relación con los clientes? ¿Para respetar el criterio de los empleados?

7. Comenzar desde arriba

La experiencia del cliente comienza con el director ejecutivo. La mejor experiencia del cliente nace en empresas centradas en brindarla, desde la gerencia sénior, pasando por todos los niveles hasta los agentes de primera línea. Asocie cada parámetro de medición con iniciativas de la empresa para que los agentes puedan comprender cuál es su función dentro de la organización.

Amazon constantemente recibe elogios por su excelente servicio al cliente. Curiosamente, a menudo es la experiencia del cliente (experiencia personalizada, compras sin complicaciones y envío rápido) lo que se menciona en lugar de como la empresa resuelve los problemas. El director ejecutivo Jeff Bezos entiende que está todo relacionado y ha organizado la empresa de modo que el ‘servicio’, o el equipo del contact center con el que uno se comunica cuando se tiene un problema, sea parte del grupo de ‘experiencia’. Es posible que Bezos o las demás personas en altos cargos hayan arribado a esta conclusión en uno de los dos días por año que cada empleado de la empresa debe trabajar en atención al cliente, respondiendo mensajes de correo electrónico de clientes.

De hecho, al igual que Amazon, Zappos.com también requiere que todos los empleados trabajen en el sector de servicio al cliente durante algunos días todos los años. Como estas dos empresas a menudo se encuentran entre las tres mejores en calificaciones por mejor servicio al cliente, al parecer esto debe tener algo que ver.

8. Suministrar datos accionables a los encargados de la toma de decisiones

Para asegurar que toda la empresa esté sintonizada, comparta los informes sobre satisfacción del cliente y del contact center con toda la empresa. A fin de cuentas, la satisfacción del cliente debería ser el objetivo número uno de todos. Sin embargo, callcentres.net reveló en una encuesta de 2011 que mientras que el 95% de las empresas recopilan los comentarios de los clientes, solo el 10% los implementan para mejorar el servicio.

En SafeAuto Insurance Company, los datos sobre el servicio al cliente se extienden mucho más allá de los límites del contact center. El grupo de marketing los utiliza para trazar un mapa de las características demográficas de los clientes. La unidad de investigación de la empresa los utiliza para investigaciones. La gerencia sénior tiene su propio conjunto de informes que les brindan actualizaciones regulares acerca de las operaciones de la empresa a un nivel alto, con la capacidad de acceder a detalles específicos.

Mientras la tecnología cambia y las nuevas generaciones aportan nuevas perspectivas al mercado, la base de la gestión de la experiencia al cliente sigue siendo la misma. Si desea brindar un servicio sobresaliente, éste debe ser la prioridad principal en cada nivel de la empresa. Debe ser el enfoque de cada iniciativa. Y debe ser el objetivo de cada empleado.

12 best practices in social media customer service

If your business isn’t offering some kind of customer service via social media, you’re missing the boat. Research now proves the benefits are lasting and profitable — and who wouldn’t want in on that?

Some organizations are so savvy at social media customer service they’re using it to drive sales higher than they’ve ever been, engage customers in new ways and build brand recognition that might rival retail stalwarts.

Even better, we’ve uncovered some of the best practices in social media customer service from the people living and working it every day.

But first, you’ll want to fully understand the impact social media has had on customers, the face of customer service and future sales.

What do customers want from social media?

If you’re a marketing professional reading this, brace yourself. According to findings from J.D. Power and Associates research, only 34% of social media users go on a company site for marketing reasons. The rest are there for customer service reasons.

Meanwhile, this is news every marketer, customer service and sales pro can applaud: People who use social media to get help are likely to spend more money with a company than those who don’t use social media, said Jacqueline Anderson, director of product development for social media and text analytics at J.D. Power and Associates, while speaking at the ICSA Annual Conference.

One caveat: Social customers — like all the others — will buy more if their experience is good.

That means if you’re going to provide some kind of help via social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook, you’ll want to make sure everything you do conforms to the same high standards that exist in your other channels. The biggest reason: “Social media users will talk,” said Anderson.

Forty-two percent of social media customers will tell others about a positive experience, while just 15% of the general population will tell others. Plus, 53% of social media users talk about bad experiences, while just 24% of the general population spread the negative word, J.D. Power researchers found.

With such a high probability that customers will share bad experiences, it might be tempting to avoid the whole social media scene and stick to the phones — especially since the majority of customer service inquiries still come in via phone (still about 70%, according to most studies).

But social media’s not much of a choice any more. Customers demand it — and companies are increasingly responding: 33% of contact centers support social media, a Deloitte Consulting survey found. So make the best of a social media customer service approach with these best practices:

1. Stick to the right channel

Only 44% of customers say they get a response to their customer service inquiries on the same channel in which they were made, Anderson said. That’s a big no-no.

You must respond to customers via the same channel they used to contact you. If it’s an angry social media contact, make the first response via social media and suggest you take it offline (to email or phone) to get the situation resolved.

Assuming all goes well throughout the resolution, go back to the social media channel as a follow-up with customers (and the public who might see it) to confirm that they’re happy with the results, suggests Jason Levesque, CEO and founder of Argo Marketing.

2. Respond faster

Today, customers expect almost immediate responses in social media. Yet, just 61% of customers said they got a response within 24 hours of a social media inquiry, J.D. Power researchers found.

For Levesque and his social media team at Argo, “immediate” means 15 minutes. “Really, you want to respond to every customer engagement request within 15 minutes. You’d never make a customer wait that amount of time on the phone. So why would you do it for an email or a social media request. Fifteen minutes is an acceptable, reasonable response time as long as you give customers that expectation.”

If you can’t do that, consider posting hours when someone is available for immediate response and what customers should do for fast answers when that option isn’t available.

3. Be consistent

You don’t want to script every social media response, but you certainly can create a template for your most common inquiries and issues. That helps create consistency from one response to the next, regardless of who responds to customers.

From there, personalize it, Levesque suggested. Reps can always add customers’ names to the correspondence or a personal message that pertains to the individual situation.

4. Maintain consistency

On equal footing with message consistency is consistency across channels. Social media is an extension of all other existing channels (and likely another step into the next era of service, whatever that may be).

So customers should experience the same level of professionalism, quality and accuracy in social media messages as they do in phone conversations and email exchanges, Levesque and Anderson agreed.

5. Connect and empathize

Social media can seem impersonal at first glance. After all, on the surface, it appears to be a couple of computers interacting. But employees who handle social media interactions can connect personally with customers through clear empathy, especially in potentially emotional situations.

“Always use ‘feel,’ ‘felt,’ found,'” suggested Levesque. It’s a proven model for conveying understanding and empathy to customers.

As an example, reps might respond like this: “I understand why you feel that way. I helped another customer who faced a similar situation and felt the same. When it happened, we found that this worked best …”

6. Repeat the right language

Social media is a fast, convenient, casual way to communicate. But it’s no excuse for forgetting manners.

Companies need to ensure that front-line pros who post and respond via social media use words that reflect concern and courtesy — just like you would if you were having a conversation.

Anderson suggested a policy that requires every interaction include formalities such as “please,” “thank you” and “I understand …”

7. Get time and content right

You know it’s important to respond to customers in social media at the right time. To increase interaction with customers, post pertinent information — not promotional info — that can help customers at the right time.

Facebook posts — which should be fun and interesting should go up at the end of the work day because people tend to look at the site after hours. Twitter posts should be more newsworthy — some company news, some links to other sites with relevant industry information — and put up two or three times a day during work hours when people look for that kind of information, Levesque suggested.

8. Make it easier

Give customers icons at the top of the company website and social sites to connect in any way they choose — Twitter, Facebook, phone, online chat, etc. Reason: While customers’ first instinct may be to connect via social media, many change their minds and want easy access to help on the phone or an FAQ page, said Anderson.

Even more helpful: Use your “contact us” page to clarify best times to reach out on each channel.

Another note: Maintain just one account in each of the social media outlets. Some organizations start a page, then build a different customer service page — which only garners confusion with customers and creates inconsistent experiences.

9. Bring reps to life

Let customers know they’re chatting with a real person by having reps use their real initials, or first names and last initials in conversations.

Even better, some companies include reps’ head shots or a personal photo — perhaps of a favorite animal or vacation spot — with their posts and responses.

10. Focus on resolution, too

As much as we focus on response time in social media, it’s equally important to focus on getting issues fixed.

Anderson shared this success: One bank has agents work through customer issues until the customer confirms it has been resolved.

There are no hand-offs or “Let me get back to you.” The focus of every social media contact at the bank is reaching a resolution.

11. Keep customer care the priority

Because customers increasingly go to social media for service reasons, Levesque suggested that social media efforts and support remain in the hands of customer care.

That team already knows how to professionally, consistently and accurately help customers — and is the best candidate to do it via social media.

12. Ensure brand cohesion

Marketing still needs to play a strong role, in the social media presence. They want to be sure that the content looks and feels the same across all channels.

http://www.customerexperienceinsight.com/12-best-practices-in-social-media-customer-service/2/