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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SOCIAL MEDIA Social media provides a great opportunity to understand the sentiments of your customer base and identify areas for making stronger connections. Most organizations are still working on how to best use social media, so if you’re new to it, here are three preliminary steps: 1) Find out where your customer base is having discussions online. 2) Listen to the conversations. Understand the issues prior to jumping in and participating in the conversation. 3) Think about your resources before you engage in social media, as you may risk customer dissatisfaction if you can’t engage in a consistent and predictable manner. To ensure you’re ready to engage with your customers via social media, think through the following: 34 CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 1) Governance: Establish guidelines to ensure your employees are engaging through social media in appropriate discussions with an appropriate tone that best represents your brand. 2) Strategic guidance: Identify key influencers who have a significant impact on your customers’ perception of your company, and develop an engagement model for this audience. Identify existing online communities where you will start to engage in discussions. If appropriate, create communities and encourage your customers to join the discussion. (Note: It is a lot easier to engage with your customers where they are already spending their time. You will also have more credibility in discussions if your competitors are also able to have a voice.) 3) Content: Ensure that individual employees are accountable for generating content so that you have an “always on” approach to social media. 4) Response time: Consider how you will respond to questions or frustrations that may arise SOCIAL MEDIA through social media channels. For instance consider having dedicated customer service representatives to monitor and answer comments, which often surprises and delights customers who were not expecting the company to respond to something they posted on Twitter. 5) Analytics: Use social media monitoring tools to provide weekly insights into the discussions that are taking place online. There are a number of different tools available in the market to help you gain these insights. 6) ROI: Create a social media dashboard to measure reach, influence and sentiment, which will provide immediate insights on issues that you may be affecting.