Are you one of the 91% of brands who customers claim they never hear back from at all, or one of the 9% who do —in an average of 11 hours? Join the 9% folks with these 5 tips on social response.

1. 5 steps to
serious social
response

2. %
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One quarter of your customers expect to hear from you after
tweeting about your brand, good or bad. Are you one of the 91%
of brands who customers claim they never hear back from at
of social customers
will abandon
a purchase
because of poor
customer service.
all, or one of the 9% who do1 —in an average of 11 hours2?
Closing in fast on email and telephone, social has fast
become one of the Big Three customer service channels.
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If you’re not putting the finishing touches on your social
response solution now, early-mover advantage may already
be out of reach. Social customers now expect your brand
More than 15% of customers
will abandon your company after
one negative customer service
experience—40% will after two.
to be present and responsive across social media. Fortytwo percent expect a response in 1 hour—57% expect your
response times to be the same 24/7. Yep, you’re now expected
to give the same level of service in the middle of the night and
on weekends as you do during the business day.
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If you are getting your social response solution in order, step
it up. The time for dabbling has long past—your slow or nonexistent social responsivness is costing you.
Consumers tell an
average of
53 other
people about their
negative customer
experiences.
Source:
Social Media Today
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3. The good news is that social customers are as giving as they
1. assign service roles to social teams
are demanding—when you do right by them. Eighty-seven
The most productive service agents have specialized roles—
percent say that positive online social interactions positively
Agents, Supervisors and Managers are typical of large
impact the likelihood that they’ll purchase again from a brand,
customer service organizations. Use roles with access levels
and that the responsiveness of the service representatives
that match skill sets to get teams up and running efficiently
were key to that satisfaction.5
and effectively. As each service agent matures within their
To deliver the positive social interactions your customers
now expect, you need a social response tool for high-volume
role, expand them. Design a dynamic team with opportunities
for growth.
customer service interactions—one that scales as your team
2. prioritize and route social posts
(and social volume) grows. And that’s just your ante—table
Automation is a beautiful thing. When done correctly,
stakes for getting in the game with social customers.
automation works behind the scenes doing all the heavy lifting
To win, you need to go beyond just meeting customer
expectations—you have to exceed them. Here are five steps
so agents can work on the most important posts while less
important, unactionable posts are filtered out of the system.
to getting serious about your social response solution so you
The concepts introduced and perfected by high-volume
can gain competitive advantage with social customers:
contact centers such as IVR menus, call routing and
message queues can now be applied to social customer
support applications. Before an agent even sees a post,
workflow, automation and prioritization engines running
behind the scenes should deliver the right message to the
right agent at the right time.
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4. 3. actively manage social conversations
5. unite on- and off-domain content
Nothing turns a social customer off more than a brand
Apps that unite off-domain posts (eg: customer posts on
treating social media like a broadcast medium. Canned
Facebook, Twitter & Google+) with on-domain content (eg:
responses over social media are a big no-no and social
community posts, accepted solutions, knowledgebase
customers will call you out to all their fans and followers
articles) give social customers a three-fold benefit:
if you make the mistake of “talking at” them instead of
“speaking with them.” The millions of tweets and posts out
there aren’t just announcements, they are conversations and
should be treated as such. Your social response tool should
thread conversations and automatically route new comments
in existing threads to the appropriate agent.
4. report on what matters
1. Quicker access to more information
2.
A more cohesive customer service experience, and
3. Access to trusted content—content that comes from
people like themselves.
When 90% of customers trust their peers and just 14%
trust brands6 , a social response solution that connects
Mentions, fans, followers, trending topics, word clouds—all
customers with trusted content from others like
great data, but your social response solutions is all about
themselves is a must have.
response. You need to know how well you’re meeting
customer need, and for that, you need actionable intelligence.
Measure social response success with metrics like time to
agent response, queue backlog, customer satisfaction and
flush rate.
1.
Redshift Research 2012 survey of 1,000 consumers
2.
http://digitalmarketinginstitute.ie/blog/average-brand-response-time-on-twitter-is-11-hours
3.
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/the-social-habit/42-percent-of-consumers-complaining-in-social-media-expect-60-minute-response-time/
4.
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/the-social-habit/42-percent-of-consumers-complaining-in-social-media-expect-60-minute-response-time/
5.
http://socialmediatoday.com/jessicareed/1358481/twitter-customer-service-maximizing-issue-responsiveness
6.
http://www.socialnomics.net/2012/01/04/39-social-media-statistics-to-start-2012/
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5. About Lithium Technologies: Lithium social software helps
companies unlock the passion of their customers. Lithium
powers amazing social customer experiences for more than
300 iconic brands including AT&T, BT, BestBuy, Indosat,
Sephora, Skype and Telstra. The 100% SaaS-based Lithium
Social Customer Experience™ platform enables brands to
build and engage vibrant customer communities to drive
sales, reduce service costs, accelerate innovation and
grow brand advocacy. For more information, visit lithium.
com,or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and our own
community–the Lithosphere. Lithium is privately held with
corporate headquarters in San Francisco and offices across
Europe, Asia and Australia.
The Lithium® logo is a registered Service Mark of Lithium Technologies. All
trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.
request a demo
Lithium social software helps the world’s most iconic brands
increase loyalty, reduce support costs, drive word-of-mouth
marketing, and accelerate innovation.
Lithium helps brands to build vibrant customer communities that:
reduce service costs with
social support
grow brand advocay with
social marketing
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