This week, we’re running a series of articles and features looking at customer service and the role social media has to play for small businesses. We are running this in conjunction with @verygoodservice and, each day, we’ll be asking the guys there a question on the topic.
What advice would you give to companies wishing to set up a customer service team handling a social media channel?
We believe that the fundamentals required to deliver customer service through social media are actually pretty simple.
Companies must get two elements right: people and procedures.
The balance between the two elements will very much depend on the size of the business and whilst no element can be reduced to zero, one can become very dominant.
For a small business, it is all about people. More often than not, the owner himself will be handling the social media aspects and can offer a very personable approach, deciding on the spot how to react to customer demands. The owner will also set the tone in terms of style and his/her personal touch will intrinsically reflect the culture of the company.
For larger businesses, procedures become the more dominant element. What can we do, what can’t we do? These questions will drive the designs of elaborate policies which then need to be implemented by the people who are actually manning the social media channels.
The short response time required to maintain credibility on Twitter, for example, means that companies have to set up priority channels whereby the public cases will be resolved very quickly, hence the need for solid procedures.
Interestingly the more established companies have very much caught up on the need to balance hard policies with a personal touch and in many cases customers interact with a named individual as opposed to an anonymous corporate branded account – we clearly have not got it right at verygoodservice.com as we are still operating under our brand name @verygoodservice on Twitter!
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