But will social media improve your customer experience?

By: Jeffrey Sherman

A hot debated topic is exactly what place will social media play in the customer experience. We will attempt to lessen the debate by outlining key areas that social media can play in improving the customer relationship. We will be looking at three specific places social media can flex its muscle creating a superior customer service level. We will be looking at the increased level of direct communication, the ability to provide real time feedback and the higher quality of information control. With these three areas alone we will see that social media does in fact improve the customer experience. We are going to take a walk through the reasons and visit examples of companies that have a track record of being successful using social media. In each of these examples we will highlight what social media is being used and provide links to the media we reference as well as the other articles used to help create this guide.

The biggest impact of social media has been in the increased level of communication. With the advent of social media sights such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr each area of media has been brought back to the masses allowing once again for the average person to truly have a voice. This is especially poignant when taken advantage of by organizations to show they care about customers. They now can speak with the consumers of their products directly, no longer having to rely on the “industry feedback numbers” produced by polling companies. They can open up a social media page and ask direct questions to their clients. A prime example of this Coca-Cola has numerous social networks such as CokeTag². They also have a Facebook page and blogs. The first blog found by Googling is Coca-Cola Conversations³.¹ This launch into social media has been a key in Coca-Cola’s ability to continue its growth in the soft drink industry at a time when there is an overall negative attitude towards carbonated soft drinks.⁴ This shows an example of how a company is using the increased level of communication to draw out information and improve the customer experience.

With the advent of an increased dialogue comes the ability to have feedback come at a much more effective rate. With social media advancing as it is, sites like Twitter allow for instantaneous feedback from an end user. One the things that companies have long fought with is how to truly know what the customer thinks in a timely manner. There was always a way to gage interest well after the sale through 800 numbers and contact forms on website, however both cases meant extra steps for customers to use. As text messaging became a craze with an estimated 39.4 billion texts sent a month in the United States alone,⁵ it is safe to say that people are texting as a regular tool. Twitter, allows you to text and receive real time feedback. Dell has more than 30 corporate accounts on Twitter ranging in ways to get Dell offers from the Dell Outlet to the Alienware account giving gamers a chance to talk about the higher performance machines.⁶ This allows Dell to keep up with the chatter going on about their products, notify their clients of deals and of course receive immediate feedback from those clients. That feedback requires nothing more than a simple text from their cell phone.

With the customer now having the ability to dialogue and provide almost instantaneous feedback, we must realize that more information needs to be readily available that each organization needs to be able to control. Social media is available in every platform from mainly text based such as Twitter and Facebook, to the large multimedia sites such as YouTube, Flickr and MySpace. Companies can now put out large amounts of information from “unedited television commercials” to interactive television projects like the one recently run by Hyundai. This information is extremely important, because not only does it allow for nearly global saturation, but it is controlled information. At each level the company can control how the information is presented and what medium best suits their message. Google has a You Tube video Google channel.⁷ This means that even though Google has become a household term and a leader in the area of online search, they feel a need to control and put out a message using social media. The Google channel on YouTube features talks given by the people at Google on a variety of topics and also has an interactive invitation to upload your video for the Chrome logo. This shows however that even a top brand name feels the need to put information out there to foster the brands strength and awareness that is controllable to the company.

We have looked at multiple ways that social media truly is providing customers with a greater experience with companies. The areas we looked at were the great increase in the amount of communication about a product, the instantaneous ability to provide and receive feedback and of course the ability to put out copious amounts of information to satisfy those needs and maintain control over that media. As we move forward in the digital age and the internet becomes an increasingly larger part of our daily lives, the ability to have true feedback and dialogue over your product or service can truly make a difference in the way a company performs. To illustrate this point truly we look at an industry that has been in decline now for close to a decade. The airline industry has been hit with obstacle after obstacle and many of the airlines faced bankruptcy or forced mergers. With low ratings in customer service, high fuel costs, decreased flight traffic and of course the additional fear that was added by the 9/11 terrorist attacks the airline industry has not had many bright spots. That said there has been one airline that has consistently performed and rated at or near the top in customer service, profitability and still seems to be able to fill the snake coils at many airports. That airline, Southwest, is participating in Blogs⁸ and Microblogs⁹. They have an active channel on YouTube¹⁰ and they have a group with Flickr¹¹. Not to mention that Southwest has been running adds with their popular “Ding! You are now free to move about the country”, to show off the online widget they have appropriately called Ding!¹². Is this the only reason they are profitable, of course not, but in an age where most of the airlines are battling for ways to not please the people flying with them, these small steps provide for the Southwest client the feeling of being something special.

Social media makes a difference for the customer experience and that is shown with the examples above and countless others that we do not have time to mention. If you are interested in those other organizations and would like more examples of how social media can truly make a difference for your clients feel free to contact the author of this paper by emailing him at jscottsherman@jscottsherman.com or visit his blog where all his articles are posted at www.jscottsherman.com.

Bibliography

1. http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/companies-using-social-networking-to-boost-sale
2. www.coketag.com
3. www.coca-colaconversations.com/
4. ww.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/173021690.html
5. www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/07/verizon_wireles_6.html
6. http://www.dell.com/twitter
7. http://www.youtube.com/google
8. http://www.blogsouthwest.com/
9. http://twitter.com/SouthwestAir
10. http://www.youtube.com/user/NutsAboutSouthwest
11. http://flickr.com/groups/southwestairlines/
12. http://www.southwest.com/cgi-bin/systray?action=download&refId=2006050000000051&ref=ding_info