The Social Customer

In every sentence made by organizations today,  customer engagement is mentioned a few times to buttress how customer - centric the organizations thinks itself to be.  In the true sense of the word,  how engaging is your organization with its customers?  Does your organization walk the walk?   Customer engagement is not about listenin g to the customer, handling customer complaints and questions which can be said to be reactive to customers wants and needs at the point of a complaint, but organizations are becoming more proactive with the power shift in business - consumer relationship. As this shift occurs,  people have raised their expectations and grown less patient with companies that disappoint them or are failing to adapt to this evolving landscape of proactive customer relationship building.  Customer engagement requires building real relationships with your customers and understanding them fully as people and connecting with the...

#1  Always respond to customers as 80% of complaints go unanswered. This gets customers angry and vent to their followers. #2 Develop the habit of using the tag feature and dealing with top priority situations first and quickly. #3 Respond to complaints quickly, often within 1 hour as 50% of social customers expect a response within the first hour. #4 Be friendly, use the customer’s name and use positive words only. This will communicate willingness to help and correct a mistake. #5 Encourage the customer to respond when satisfied with the service recovery options or solution. Rectification and customer satisfaction should be shared or retweeted to communicate a positive image and customer centricity of your brand. #6 When the customers seems upset and irrational, go via DM, making your conversation private for brand and customer protection. #7 Monitor social media for both positive and negative brand mentions for immediate resolution or butt...

The explosive growth of social media has evolved the new customer, the social customer who is every man, woman or child that is an active participant on social media. These can be estimated to be roughly 1.5billion people which has shaken brands and now determines business survival or death. How? The Social Customer has a very powerful voice, a fact which large organizations are realizing this undeniable authority, and has in turn created PR and social media mayhem ranging from the largest organizations to the smallest businesses. The social customer demands and drives his expectations, he / she cannot be ignored, they do not just tell their friends if unhappy, they influence their circle of followers on different social media platforms, all within a matter of seconds on companies that ignore complaints or are not customer focused and do not care about their customer problems. The Social Customer demands immediate feedback with the old 9 am – 5pm work schedule of organizations ...