Paolo Fabrizio
April 14, 2017

Curatti On Air: Overcoming Social Customer Service Hurdles

CoA: Paolo Fabrizio - Social Customer Service HurdlesEven though most people use social media every day, many brands are still reluctant to use it as customer support channels. That’s due to different reasons but – as a consultant – I’ve experienced three Social Customer Service hurdles, and I’ve turned them into questions for you in this post.

At the end of it you will also find a video interview where I dive into the following topics.

1. Do you consider customer service just as a cost?

This first question touches the very point, which is cultural. In fact when a top management brand still considers customer service as a ‘post-sale’ department, that’s a very serious issue. It shows that they perhaps don’t care enough about daily conversations with their customers. On the flip side, of course, customers do care about it a lot! In fact more and more of them switch to competitors after a bad customer experience

TIP: value-for-money still matters, but what’s in it for for your customers?

2. Do you really have a customer service department?

This may seem an obvious question, but it’s not. Especially when dealing with very small brands (here in Italy over 90% of companies employ less than 10 staff) I was shocked to discover that in some cases, customer service was a ‘rotation task’ randomly handled by other department’s staff. In such, cases three further questions immediately arise:

  • How many people in your company have their time 100% devoted to your customers? 
  • How do they collect and share customer feedback?   
  • Is your staff fully committed to deal with customers issues and fix them effectively?

3. What’s your customer retention strategy?

Delivering excellent Social Customer Service means building long lasting relationships with your customers. So, before thinking about digital tools or marketing tactics, just focus on your goals. A crucial one for any brand or industry is definitely customer retention. So you should investigate first how long your customers stay with you and what’s their current CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). Then consider how much you want to improve it. Next, after setting up a clear, smart goal, it’ll be time to work on your customer retention strategy. 

Curatti On Air interview: Social Customer Service Hurdles

Want to overcome Social Customer Service hurdles? Watch this lively and informative video-interview with interviewer Cheryl Tan and Curatti’s Andy Capaloff. Italians may be more renowned for speaking with their hands than English people, but Andy gives me a run for my money here!

 

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Paolo Fabrizio

Digital Customer Service Consultant, Trainer, Author, Speaker. Paolo has been helping companies to harness digital customer service as a business driver. Founder of CustomerServiceCulture, author of books and speaker at conferences in Italy and abroad. Lecturer at the Bicocca University of Milan