Customer service has always been critical to the success of business, irrespective of what industry you’re in. Research by a whole host of people, including PriceWaterhouseCoopers have clearly demonstrated that outstanding customer service was a greater contributor to company growth, return on investment and customer loyalty than either advertising and promotion or new products. However, despite this irrefutable evidence, the customer service provided by most bricks and mortar businesses is far less than acceptable. In the future, as relationships become more and more important in business anyone that doesn’t provide awesome customer service is really putting their company at risk.
It is at least as important, if not more important for online businesses to develop customer loyalty and word-of-mouth through outstanding customer service than it is for bricks and mortar businesses. BI Intelligence reported this week that not only is customer service online not improving, but it is in fact getting worse. But on the positive side, they do report that there are a few companies that are working hard to be customer centric organizations. They also found that social media was a great tool for companies who are facing crises or PR disasters.
BI reports that great examples of excellent social media customer focus include Dell, who opened up their social media command center to all employees, irregardless of their function. Dell trained over 25,000 of their employees in social listening. These employees now monitor over 25,000 social mentions of the company every day in 11 languages. This provides tremendous insight into the thinking of customers and potential customers.
After the disastrous YouTube video a few years ago. Dominos Pizza launched a massive campaign to analyze public opinion across all social media. They very aggressively reached out to customers on social media and launched a marketing campaign promoting a better product. They saw an immediate 14% increase in sales as well as a significant jump in their stock price.
After Super Storm Sandy when American Airlines had to deal with a near systemwide shutdown, they turned to social media and now American Airlines ranks ninth amongst all US brands with a response rate of 94% on how attentive they are to customers on Twitter.