One of the prevailing attitudes about customer service is that its just about damage control: Dealing with customer complaints. But customer service shouldn’t just be about damage control, and while social media is a wonderful medium for tracking what customers are saying or aren’t saying about your business, it also offers the opportunity to simply get into conversations with clients.
It seems to me that one part of customer service that’s ignored is customer retention. So while customer service will handle customer complaints, they won’t necessarily be proactive and actually talk with customers to establish a relationship with them based on trust as opposed to distrust. With social media, it’s easy to actually get involved in the conversation with a customer.
Here’s a tactic I use with my clients, that could also be used by other businesses, (even large ones) provided they are willing to assign customer service reps to specific clients. In Twitter create a specific list called clients and put all of your clients on there. On Facebook become a fan of their fan pages (if they are a business) and make it a point to visit those pages once a day. For each social media site there is a way to check up on clients, and engage them in conversation, provided you are willing to invest the time in doing so. Start conversations with your clients, or make a response to something they say that has nothing to do with your business. In short, show support for what matters to them, instead of waiting for them to contact you when they have a problem. By doing this you’ll be showing them that your interested in having a relationship with them, regardless of whether or not you’re doing business with them at the time.
Customer service should be about relationships first and damage control second. No business has an excuse for not investing in customer relationships, because each business is ultimately successful because of the customers. The product or service offered is only useful if someone wants to buy it, use it, and tell people about it. So ask yourself this: Is your customer service about damage control or actually getting to know your clients?
