Archive - Social Software RSS Feed

16 things to do before talking ‘social’ to a client

January 2, 2012 in Education, Social Media, Social Software with 0 Comments

I get asked this every so often by colleagues, business partners and now more often clients who are faced with the need to talk about social media with their clients. Many or most of them are not very “social” in this sense of the word and are unsure of where to begin. Think about it, if you want to sell cars, you need to have sat in one, if you are into baseball you need to have seen a game. Social media is not different. So, before you begin talking social to customer, partners or competitors you might want to try these out and familiarize yourself with the places, the tools and the functions. These are all free but will take some time getting through the setup phase and begin using them.

Discussion with client

Be comfortable talking social

Continue Reading…

Social Service in the Contact Center – is this a good thing?

June 22, 2011 in Corporate, Customer Service, Social Media, Social Software with 11 Comments

There is much talk about corporations getting onto the social bandwagon. Marketing often or usually leads the quest with customer services in tow. While the possibilities of engaging customers, potential customer in the social web and spreading your marketing story may seem like a good idea and may even work, can a “social service” actually be delivered on current platforms by the current contact centers? Continue Reading…

Twitter Service Missed Again

March 23, 2011 in Corporate, Policies, Social Media, Social Software with 4 Comments

This time it was the CNN host Piers Morgan trying to get from New York to Minneapolis and it was just not meant to be. But that is not the point. He was flying Delta (second attempt that day to fly) and their online service boasts the following.

 

And they are a follower of Piers as well. Adding to this is a third point, Piers has over 470K followers currently on Twitter.

So, the following couple of entries Piers posted on Twitter while sitting on a Delta plane might be, well not surprising, but that Delta Service did not pick this up and action this is.

Follow the action and the time line: (timestamps are Paris time)

“What an absolute bloody joke”

So, at this point it was pretty obvious that the customer here was not amused at all and that there was plenty reason for customer service to trigger an action to assist this passenger. As you might guess this did not happen and 7 minutes after that last tweet the following went out to his nearly half a million followers.

This went out after 20 minutes had passed since his obvious escalation. Keywords such as “bloody joke” and “ashamed” should have been caught be the sentiment engine and given the appropriate attention. Now the damage is done and we will surely read about this in the coming days as another example of how social media is not good for companies and how companies fail at social media. But did Delta honestly fail here?

The folks at Delta Assist had reached out to him earlier during the day as his earlier attempt to flight was failing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Piers had sent his details and he was put on the famed flight above. So, why did Delta Assist reply so well, rescheduled him on another flight and then stopped? All was looking good from a customer service angle. It appears that Delta is working hard to build a stable support channel on Twitter and by observation of their tweets and the replies others are sending this is often very welcomed. Part of Delta’s program broke down here and just happened to occur as an upset English traveler was letting his view known to all of Twittersphere.

Could Delta have done better? Surely, with the proper program in place, this may have been avoidable. Should a celebrity like Piers Morgan think twice before tweeting, IMHO surely.

Initial Tweetchat experience

March 10, 2011 in Social Media, Social Software with 4 Comments

I joined in to my first tweet chat this week and was not too sure what to expect from it.Tweet Chat

I had seen a tweet just 30 minutes before it was to begin which reminded me of one I had seen the day before. The subject was “Social Media and Customer Service – Working Together for a Better Bottom Line”. Amber Cleveland and her blog @Amber Cleveland WordPress explains a bit more.

The invitation was this:

“Join the social media tweetchat at 1pm ET, Wednesday, March 9th.  The hashtag for this conversation is #SMChat”

And the questions which were going to be asked:

  1. What is the best practice to develop customer service policy that includes social media?
  2. How do you train your team to provide customer service using social media?
  3. How do you take your customer service to the next level using social media?
  4. What are the competitive advantages that can be gained by providing customer service via social media?

So, I ignored the kids here at home (was 7pm start for me here) and cranked up my Hootsuite, added a feed filtering on the hashtag and immediately saw the first people “introducing” themselves to the  gathering crowd. People like @SourcePOV, @SMSJoe, @thehealthmaven, @blogbrevity and more sent their “hellos” all followed by the #smchat tagline so everyone could follow. Who are these people and what kind of funny event will this be? I had heard of twitter chats before, or better I had read people reports (like this) of their fun on a twitter chat but I really could not image what would follow.

Just after the hour started @ambercleveland posted the first question to the Twittersphere and the race began. It started a bit slow around the first question and I hesitated from my comfortable, observer role before making my first tweet with the said identifier. But once I did and the first RT (retweet) of my comment appeared a few seconds later I felt more at ease. The second question came and the chatter or better twittering increased in speed and I began wishing I could type faster. Adding ‘@’ and ‘#’ within my lines is not a regular exercise and I felt really slow, but that did not matter. Even when the second question was well underway others were still joining and commenting on the first. This did not seem to bother anyone.

By the time the third question came and went I saw a tweet I had to also RT

I have no idea who @eamcc but I could imagine they were sitting there with a cup of tea untouched for the entire hour. I tweeted about 24 times that hour, more than I have in most DAYS. I learned a few things during this exercise.

  • I don’t type fast enough
  • A good twitter tool is a must
  • Don’t worry that the stream doesn’t read like a book. I am back at it a day later to capture some of the raisins.
  • Be polite to the others but also be challenging. This really gets the conversation going.
  • Use retweeting or direct messaging to add importance or get a sidebar going.
  • Things may be crazy fast, reading, replying, retweeting but the tea can be remade.
  • New contacts will be made and who knows in the heat of it where that will lead to.

Will I do this again? You betcha I will.

Updated: added the transcript now that I know how. And now I know who is behind @eamcc.

Transcript for #smchat_20110309

Page 1 of 212»