For a long time, customers who needed to interact with the companies they buy products and services from felt largely powerless. They could call into a call center and wait in queue and hope to get a person who answered their questions or they could send an e-mail, knowing there was only a 50-50 chance they would get a response.
Their expectations were low, so offering lackluster customer service was something many companies were willing to risk doing. Fast forward to 2013, and this is no longer the case. Enter the popularity of social media, which allows customers to broadcast their negative experiences far and wide to a broad swathe of other people. Suddenly, the customer service stakes are a lot higher for consumer companies, and even b-to-b companies. In fact, one in five customers now reports that they use social media to seek resolution for their problems with companies.
Knowledge management, help desk and self-service technology solutions provider Zendesk maintains its Zendesk Benchmark, which polls customers to determine exactly what they expect from companies. The benchmark combines support data from over 30,000 companies to build a global, up-to-date source of customer support knowledge. The Benchmark has found that speedy response and resolution times are a key driver of customer satisfaction and success, wrote the company in a recent blog post. For this reason, it’s important to run a customer support center built on a product that can keeps contact center agents and help desk personnel as productive as possible. This allows them to engage with customers on their preferred, real-time channel: today, that is social media.
Companies can take steps to resolve issues on social media before they become too damaging, offering a timely and proactive response that helps take the sting – and the negative side effects – out of critical social media posts and shares.