Technology has changed the way many industries work, in ways which have mostly been beneficial. Social media has become extremely important for growing businesses. Professionals in various industries, from marketing to IT will have noticed the impact of social media. Many professionals, such as http://www.ben-austin.co.uk, choose to blog about their experiences. Customer service is one of the areas which has been most dramatically altered. In the past, reputations were created through face-to-face customer interactions over a long period of time, now it can only take a minute to change the reputation of your business through a negative comment online.
Creating a Business Persona
The increasing importance of social media for businesses has seen a growing trend of businesses having their own ‘personalities’. This has been seen in advertising to an extent in the past, but social media has placed even more importance on the consistent branding of a business. Many businesses create a personality to stand out from their competitors and engage with their audience. This is one way in which customer service has changed in recent years. In the past, most customers would have expected formal interactions. Social media and business personalities have completely changed this, with companies sending friendly and humorous responses to their customer’s queries.
Direct Responses Online
Customers now expect a much faster reply to their comments and complaints, thanks to the introduction of social media. Many businesses will have noticed a reduction in customer phone calls, as more people prefer to send a complaint via twitter or Facebook. This means that companies’ customer service departments are changing to being more social media based, instead of having teams of phone operators. Some companies are going as far as implementing AI technology to answer customer queries twenty four hours a day to improve their customer service.
Mistakes Are More Noticeable
In the past, a mistake was kept between a business and their customer and it was usually resolved between the two parties. The increasing use of social media for managing customer complaints means that mistakes can quickly gain a large amount of attention. In some cases, they can even go viral. While some businesses can spin a mistake as a humorous error and take advantage of the attention, for others the negative press can be extremely damaging. Social media is instant, which means that anything that is posted can immediately be seen by hundreds of people. This means that businesses have to be extremely careful about the content they are posting online and how they respond to their customers.
Customer’s Influence
Customers now have more influence over businesses than ever. Businesses place a significant amount of energy and time into engaging customers on social media. Many companies even track their following, interactions and engagement to see how well they are performing. This means that if customers are sending negative feedback about a particular campaign or product, this feedback is going to be heard and changes will be implemented almost immediately.