SOCIAL CUSTOMER SERVICE

It goes without saying that your attitude towards a social media crisis should be one of anticipation than denial.You know it’s just a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. One day something flares up but you are spared. The collective eyeballs of the social web are pulled elsewhere. Other times you remain in the crosshair and become a trending hashtag.There are just too many variables to anticipate the outcome. Maybe your organisation was stupid. Maybe it was a partner, an employee or a customer. Even a competitor. Could someone have noticed its shadow in an ongoing  trend? Or did it snuck up as a ‘one-off’?All you know for sure is that one day you will be on the agenda, caught in the headlights. Then you must hope all those fire drills pay off and the major team players don’t freeze.

We Are Only Just Getting Started

Such is the inner world of social risk management at this current stage in the game. But there are already signs of the evolution that will inevitably take hold.Here is an example of an individual with enough confidence and capability to take on a brand for poor service. I’ll summarise the story through an excerpt from Laural Hampton‘s post  ’Should Social Media be a Tool for Consumer Battles?“Martin Macdonald works for Expedia EAN and is well known and respected in the digital marketing community. He has a good following on all of his social media, and his blog is widely read. As I type this, Martin is launching his campaign against  British Gas (and more specifically, @BritishGasHelp ) following unsatisfactory communications with their customer service team.”Here is another one.British Airways has been forced to apologise after a Twitter user bought a promoted tweet to complain about the airline losing his luggage.Hasan Syed, who uses the handle @HVSVN, bought the promoted tweet through the site’s self-service ad platform. The tweet said: “Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous.”In the first six hours since the tweet was promoted, it had notched up over 25,000 impressions on Twitter. This is how he summarised his efforts once BA had found the luggage and apologised.

CULLED FROM BRAIN FOOD EXTRA.COM