Delivering Effective Social Customer Service E-Book

Martin Hill-Wilson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 283

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Social Customer Service is new. Social Media is the biggest thing happening to the customer service industry since the mid 1960s when modern day call centres were born. It is taking customers and organisations into untested ways of relating: transparently, collaboratively, instantly. The consequences of great and poor service are forever changed.

Customer appetite has promoted this form of interaction to the very front of a race to understand. How do digital brands and empowered customers actually behave?

Social Customer Service has become Marketing’s R&D lab and a listening hub for the rest of the organisation. It is now where corporate reputations are most likely to be won and lost.

‘Delivering Effective Social Customer Service’ is a complete reference for achieving excellence in this new discipline. It caters to both novice and expert. It is perfect source material for service leaders and digital marketers to read together. Every CXO will recognise in the book a blueprint from which to build their next generation organisation. Even ambitious team leaders should snag a copy for instant subject matter expertise kudos!

The centre of the book offers an in depth self-assessment of the competencies that matter. The book is jammed full of strategic insight, action lists, best practice tips and interviews. All the resources anyone needs to build a solid strategy and roadmap.

Early adopter workshops based on the book have already taken place and will continue to be offered as another way of engaging with the book’s key lessons. An online resource of the reference material is also provided. Options for an online community are under consideration.

This book is the first of its kind.  A distillation of what has so far been collectively discovered. Then filtered and expanded through the collective experience of two leading authorities on customer service: Carolyn Blunt and Martin Hill-Wilson.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Endorsements

Title page

Copyright page

Foreword

A Quick Introduction to Reading This Book

Chapter 1: Where Were You When It All Changed?

The politics of social transparency

Chapter 2: Understanding Social Customer Behaviour

Customers and their use of social networks

Service expectations

Chapter 3: The Ecosystem for Social Customer Service

Big picture perspective

Mapping the territory

Visualizing the ecosystem

Operational considerations

Customer data

Chapter 4: The Roadmap for Social Customer Service

Chapter 5: Using Peer-to-Peer Support in Your Service Strategy

Community dynamics – why it works

How peer-to-peer support fits with other channels and support infrastructure

The benefits of peer-to-peer support

The outlook for peer-to-peer support

Chapter 6: How to Use Facebook for Social Customer Service

Setting up and operating Facebook as a customer service facility

Performance levels

Chapter 7: How to Use Twitter as a Service Channel

How people use Twitter

Why some organizations won't get involved

What's the business case for Twitter?

Twitter as part of your multi-channel strategy

The Twitter workflow

Chapter 8: Reputation and Crisis Management

When does a drama become a crisis?

Crisis best practice

Facebook and community best practice

Chapter 9: The Legalities of Social Interaction

Privacy, copyright and data protection are your responsibility

Who owns the content on social media profiles?

Retweet recourse

Mixing staff and social

Chapter 10: One Agenda: PR, Marketing and Customer Service Working Together

Why One Agenda?

Ending or Beginning?

Index

“As the social media world continues on its accelerated trajectory, touching all our lives, Delivering Effective Social Customer Service is a book whose time has come. It is a perfect how-to guide for all organizations, whatever stage they are at in adopting social as a route to better servicing their customers, helping companies to identify where they sit on the social continuum.

It is extremely thought-provoking being both a perfect primer for those who are at the start of their journey, as well as having loads of useful ideas and tips for those organizations who have already started using social media channels to enhance their service offering. A truly enlightening read!”

Amy Scott, Managing Director, Sedulous

“This is a book which every business should read. Social customer service is here to stay and the costs of not getting it right are usually not even understood. This topic is one that our members constantly ask about and it is fantastic to see such a clear and concise introduction. This will be of immense help to anyone wanting to learn more. It is a book you will want to read and then keep going back to. Both Martin and Carolyn have concisely distilled an unbelievable breadth of experience.”

Paul Smedley, Founder & Chair Professional, Planning Forum

A compelling and important book on the biggest trend in customer care. Written in concise, captivating language and filled with expert insight, best practices and actionable examples. HIGHLY recommended for anyone currently engaged in social customer service or about to embark upon it. If you are a customer service or contact centre supervisor, manager or executive and are thinking about NOT reading this book, I advise you to think again.”

Greg Levin, Founder of Off Center

Delivering Effective Social Customer Service is a rare find: for the novice, it offers a compelling introduction to social customer service; for the expert, it provides an essential guide to emerging best practice. Beyond the many valuable insights and examples, which are expertly explained and dissected, readers are taken on a fascinating journey which deposits them – their mind still buzzing – at a vision of a new type of organization: one with collective goals and One Agenda. I commend Martin and Carolyn on their achievement; few people have such a profound understanding of the social customer psyche.

Luke Brynley-Jones, Founder & CEO, Our Social Times

“Social media is a topic clouded by hyperbole and confusion – the perfect environment for unscrupulous ‘gurus’ and IT vendors to exploit. So thank goodness for Delivering Effective Social Customer Service. Forget the empty platitudes of self-appointed social experts, this is a book by customer service professionals for customer service professionals. Therefore we not only get a concise introduction and overview of the topic, but a comprehensive list of key competencies, quick wins and recommended actions – genuine actionable information.

Also boasting extensive references to guide further investigation into the field, Carolyn and Martin's book should provide an ideal platform for the development of your company's social media customer support strategy and its execution. Highly recommended.”

Neil Davey, Editor of MyCustomer.com

“I have friends who feel they can ignore social media. However, business can't afford to have the same attitude towards this channel which influences customer service and brand so directly and publically. This excellent book is a great read for businesses – big and small – who are grappling with how to manage social media in a practical way. It is packed full of information and good advice for those wanting to make the smart moves.”

Elizabeth Taylor, Chief Operations Officer, Zurich Australia Insurance Limited

© 2013 Carolyn Blunt and Martin Hill-Wilson

Registered office

John Wiley and Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781118662670 (paperback) ISBN 9781118662656 (ebk) ISBN 9781118770566 (ebk)

Cover design by Andrew Ward

Foreword

This book is for the people still arriving.

You might have no affinity for Social Customer Service. You might read this as an expert and tell us what we got wrong. The book you are now reading is an exploration of “old world” experience mashed up with “new world” aspiration.

We wrote it to provide another perspective. Both of us come from the world of Customer Service. We get the people from that world. We know the issues. We've moved out of that comfort zone and embraced the mindset of being social. Getting to grips with what that means in a Customer Service context.

So we write about it. We provide courses on it. We listen out and learn as new insight and lessons emerge. We saw a need to bring together the best thinking and examples of Social Customer Service that are spread across the social web and get them organized into something that helps you plan and execute a great service experience. We then filtered that through our collective experience.

This is the result.

This book's trajectory is optimistic. Hopeful that what is currently labelled Social Customer Service will evolve into something much more valuable. Namely that our industry's collective ambition moves on from reactively fixing customer issues which in truth ought to be anticipated and removed from our customers’ lives.

We live in new times. Social Customer Service is just the start.

A Quick Introduction to Reading This Book

If you are a traditional lover of books and just prefer to read cover to cover then please consume the book's ideas in this way. However, if you are intent on flicking through to pick out ideas for immediate use, then here are a few tips.

Chapters 1 and 2 are scene setters that provide an overview of how both customers and organizations have found reason to use social media as channels for interaction. Chapter 3 then moves onto the building blocks of a Social Customer Service ecosystem and begins to tease out some of the issues.

Chapter 4 then changes gear and is a little different. For a start it is much longer. It is the centre of the book in terms of using the ideas and comes in the form of a self-assessment. This is an exploration we very much hope you complete and get value from.

It defines 15 competencies that support your ability to deliver a great Social Customer Service experience. If you are a veteran of Customer Service strategy you will no doubt recognize parts of the discussion. Completing the assessment enables you to design version one of your Social Customer Service strategy.

Chapters 5 to 7 then dig deeper into the character and operational best practice for peer-to-peer support, Facebook and Twitter.

After that we tackle two core topics in Chapters 8 and 9 – crisis management and the relationship between social interaction and the law. Finally, we draw things to a close by considering the “big picture” issues that social engagement throws up. How do organizations need to adapt in this new order? A topic for the top table to consider.

Peppered throughout the book are a series of interviews with some of the most interesting people in the field of Social Customer Service today. These are a great source of practical wisdom and if you like to learn through stories then this will also be a fun way of cherry picking.

As we mentioned in the Foreword, one of our motivations was to consolidate existing material spread across the social web. Any search engine ought to find the full original versions for you. However, we have also made them available on a website dedicated to readers of this book. Log on and you will have access to all the reference material as well as some extra goodies we could not squeeze into the book.

www.socialcustomerservices.com

Who knows – it might even evolve into a social discussion amongst us all. We look forward to the chance of getting to know you personally.

Till then,

Happy reading.

Carolyn and Martin

Chapter 1

Where Were You When It All Changed?

If you are just waking up to Social Customer Service you might well wonder how all this happened. Since the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube exploded into our lives, organizations initially thought they spotted an opportunity to extend their Sales and promotional activity into new channels.

However, their mindset proved out of synch with the times. For sure they could continue brand messaging as before and even extend their broadcast model to include limited customer response in the forms of “likes” and “follows”. In fact this has become the standard way in which organizations have so far defined their customer engagement strategies.

But organizations also discovered that the communication agenda is no longer exclusively set by the brand team. As publically shared platforms, social networks allow anyone to voice their ideas. So began the birth of Social Customer Service.

Customers began to post tweets when they were unhappy or had a question about the product or service. Some strongly worded Facebook groups were established against brands and organizations that were giving bad Customer Service. YouTube videos went viral (see our interview with Dave Carroll of United Breaks Guitars fame). But they all had one thing in common. Customers had tried to get their problems resolved through traditional Customer Service channels, but then struggled to get a satisfactory resolution. Social channels provided an outlet.