Competent customer service – one aspect that separates the wheat from the chaff, and the truly creative brands from the mediocre.
If you’ve ever been asked the question:
- How important is customer service?
The right answer would be:
- Never important enough.
Social media has been one of the fastest growing marketing platforms in recent years, and it gives you a huge audience for you to interact with.
How huge? Well, let’s find out…
A glance at Statista.com reveals that the top 3 social media platforms total about 3.8 billion users.
Yes, almost 4 billion…
This is a monumental number of people who form a huge market which has become nigh impossible to ignore.
Alright, fine. So what does this actually do for your business and brand reputation?
The fact that social media has so much reach can give you an unbeatable advantage when it comes to getting in touch with your customers one-on-one.
J.D. Power has written a detailed article about how important customer service is to brand image. Though it’s a bit old, the key values hold true even today.
Some takeaways from the article:
- A whopping 67% of consumers have used a company’s social media page versus just 33% on social marketing.
- 43% of younger consumers (18-29 years old) prefer to raise service problems on a brand’s social media page.
- Quality content and responsive representatives give a brand’s image huge leverage.
What you should be asking your community manager is:
- How good is our social media customer service network?
Best Examples Of Great Customer Service
I’ve managed to round-up 7 of the most convincing examples that underline how much coverage a single, fulfilling, and unscripted customer interaction can bring to your brand.
The three things that all of these brands have in common:
- Responsiveness
- Effort
- Creativity
All of these brands are willing to go the extra mile for their customer. This is something that all brands should aspire to do, if only for the fact that it can benefit their online reputation.
Let’s take a look at a few brands that have made a mark with their exceptional levels of customer service responses.
This list is in no particular order.
#1 JetBlue
JetBlue is known to be the ultra-responsive brand on Twitter when someone mentions or DMs them.
It just so happened that during a pretty long flight, Esaí Vélez’s seatback TV had no picture and instead only gave out static. The rest of the passengers had no problems with theirs.
He tweeted out a complaint to JetBlue, nothing provocative, merely that he was disappointed.
Now, there are many ways a company could take this. Simply ignoring the tweet would’ve been the option for a lot of brands.
JetBlue, though, immediately replied to him with:
“Oh no! That’s not what we like to hear! Are all the TVs out on the plane or is it just yours?”
After he had confirmed that all the other TVs were in working order, they responded with:
“We always hate it when that happens. Send us a DM with your confirmation code to get you a credit for the non-working TV.”
Here’s the link to the whole convo on Twitter.
After a while, Esaí tweeted this –
Takeaway: Empathy and responsiveness won the day for JetBlue!
#2 Samsung
Shane Bennet would’ve never guessed that what he was about to do would turn into a full-blown social media marketing case study!
He posted on Samsung’s Facebook page that he owned many Samsung products and asked if he could get a free Galaxy S3 (a flagship device at the time). He also sent them a picture of a fire-breathing dragon that went “RAWR”.
Needless to say, Samsung went ahead and said no. But they sent him a drawing of a unicycling kangaroo along with it.
Shane shared this on Reddit and it went really viral really quickly!
To thank him for the unexpected publicity that they had inadvertently received, Samsung Canada sent him the phone he’d asked for, complete with the RAWR-ing dragon on a customized case.
Takeaway: Sometimes, fun is the name of the game when it comes to your customers.
#3 Nike
The people of Nike, who encourage us to “Just Do It”, have gone ahead and “Did It”…
They’ve created a separate handle on Twitter dedicated to customer requests and complaints. They have a dedicated support team that manages these requests through Twitter.
So what is the standout factor about this?
Nike is a huge company.
It has a number of products from sports equipment to apparel. It’s simply remarkable that they manage to respond to queries throughout the product range on just one Twitter handle.
While their official Nike handle has tweeted only 32K times, Nike Support has over 500K tweets!
Takeaway: Make it easy for people who buy your products/services to reach out to you when they have a problem.
#4 Seamless
Social media has brought everyone so close together that the lines between time-zones have pretty much vanished. What this means is that customers expect service even during odd hours of the day… or night.
Seamless is one such entity that bridges the gap in the Atlantic Ocean, servicing people from the US and England. Having such huge time differences, problems are expected to crop up.
So this happened:
Also, this:
Two different sorts of complaints and at different times, but the responses were almost immediate.
You need to consider what business model your company is using and decide on what times you will be available on social media to respond to clients.
Takeaway: Managing your social media presence around the clock is critical to your success.
#5 Delta Hotels
How many times have you traveled and ended up in a room which had a stunning view of a brick wall? Well, it’s happened to me quite a few times (more than I would like).
But that won’t be a problem when you are staying with Delta Hotels because you can be pretty sure they’ll do something about it.
Take for instance the case of Mike McCready, who had the same problem. He sent out a tweet, not tagged or asking for anything. But Delta was quick to get on the button and immediately saw to it that Mike got a better room and a dish of sweets.
Delta swings… and it’s a homerun!
Mike posted an image of this the same day, the letter and the sweets! Free publicity!
Takeaway: Social listening strategies need to be on point to catch posts even without mentions.
#6 Xbox
Microsoft’s gaming arm has learned a thing or two about prompt customer support.
They have a dedicated Twitter handle (@XboxSupport) which answers all customer queries related to any of their products.
This means peripherals, games, guides, and anything in between.
They have a team of 27 people responding to tweets at various times during the day.
This, to me, is really impressive.
They average 2 tweets a minute. This gave them a Guinness World Record for Most Responsive Brand.
That’s definitely going to look good on the resume!
Takeaway: Be organized and committed (and you might just score a Guinness World Record).
#7 Starbucks
A lot of companies have different ideas about how customer ideas are shared; Starbucks has an entire website dedicated to it.
Customers can submit different ideas and get feedback from them as well.
To date, it has amassed about 220,000 unique ideas.
It also has a dedicated Twitter account to go along with the website.
Here, customers can submit anything from improvements to the app to solar powered umbrellas that can charge mobile devices.
Takeaway: Customers can give you a great platform for new ideas.
Customer Service Lessons Learned From These Brands
As you can see, there are many ways to approach a problem.
All you need to do is to incorporate a bit of effort and creativity into your thought process and you’ll have loyal customers who will sing praises of your brand on social media and get more people interested in you as well.
But don’t do it expecting stuff to go viral every time; you’ll only end up disheartened.
Instead, take care of your customer and have faith that it will eventually pay off in the long run.
Good luck out there!
Have great customer service experiences that you’d like to share? What’s a brand that you find has really effective customer service? Do hit up the comments section and let us know if a brand went out of their way to make a difference with you!
Like this post? Don’t forget to share it!
Thanks Karan sir
For providing quality information, please sir provide information ,I have started e-commerce website and how I get organic traffic in my website
Hi Karan,
Great stuff thanks for sharing with us.
Cheers!
It was a great read! A good customer support is beneficial in building customer trust. It is more important than price.
wow. Simply I say thanks for sharing useful stuff that we don’t know! Again thanks!
Hey Karan,
Providing the better customer service adds the value to your company. People are more likely to buy a product whose customer service is good.
There are many examples as you have shown above. Nike has always been a company with kind words. I have had the sugar once.
Thanks for shedding some light.
~Ravi
This is a great post Karan.
I think Social media is best used for getting in touch with your customers and keeping them abreast of the latest developments as regards your brand.
But too many brands don’t seem to know why people follow them on social medial platforms. They think its because they are popular.
Really great post.
Focus on the basics first, getting a good website up, a strong foundation of SEO and an effective outreach program to kick things off.
Hii Karan
Nice article.. Thanks for sharing this with us I think we could all do better to improve our customer service skills. thanks for posting and keep sharing your ideas
Thanks karan for sharing this wonderful article.
Thanks Toni, glad you found it useful!
Great Karan Sir,
you are making it easy for us by sharing this type of info…….
Thanks Anand!
Dear Karan,
just a feedback when you tell customers calm down, it is like when you pour fuel on the fire. This is base on my experience dealing with angry customers.
Thanks for sharing
James Cole
Hi James and thanks for reading!
I agree with you here – if the brand were to also offer a solution or throw in goodies along with it, I’m sure customers are bound to ease up.
Very Good Article. Thanks for sharing, but here you forgot to mentioned the recent case of Amitabh Bachan tweets about Vodafone Service. Amitabh Bachan tweet about bad service of Vodafone and immeidately one of the service representative of Reliance took the benefit and offered free Jio Service.
Hi Patel, thanks for the info!
Hi Karan,
I personally think that customer service is huge. It gets a little difficult for me to respond very quickly on Social Media. I’ve actually started turning off notifications while I work on my blog.
I’ll check it first thing in the morning while I am drinking coffee. I’ll respond to people if I need to. Then I’ll also check my blog comments and emails.
Once I am done responding, I won’t check it again until later that afternoon. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for me to respond as quickly as I would like to. However, by turning off notifications, I am able to get a lot more done for my blog.
Big companies have the funds to hire people to take care of their social media accounts. That’s why it’s so easy for them to respond so quickly. I think if you’re a blogger, people understand that if it takes you a little while to respond to them.
Personally, as long as the person doesn’t ignore me and waits days to respond to me that’s all that really matters. I won’t go more than a few hours without responding.
I am to provide great customer support because I know how important it is for me to get it. I also want to be sure that I am providing it to others.
Thanks for sharing this with us. I think we could all do better to improve our customer service skills.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Susan!
I hear you about the 1-person brand vs a big company comparison.
I’ve seen several cases where just effective customer response has had a tangible and positive effect on sales numbers.
In today’s ultra-competitive market, customer service sometimes is the only difference between a brand and another.
just awsome 🙂 thanks!
No, you are awesome 🙂
Thanks Ankit!
Thanks karan sir for sharing this wonderful article, please keep sharing.
Thank you for reading, Bhavna!
Dear Karan,
Nice article on new era of customer service responsiveness… If all Indian brands could be little more responsive it will really help them as well as the customers. Good work . keep it up.
Agreed Subat.
All brands could stand to be a bit more responsive, but there are a lot of factors that determine their effectiveness like target demographics, product/service and most importantly, monetary recompense.
Hi Karan,
I am almost always super responsive for a 1 man operation. From helping clients to respond to customers to responding to comments on my blog I see no better way to render that Jet Blue level of blogging service which most folks are thirsting for. I recall a few weeks back; one client wanted to get in a quick 1 hour long consult but he only had a 2 hour window to squeeze it in. I responded to my email immediately. Booked the call. Happy client, happy me for payment received. If you can just respond to any request in a timely fashion – in the best way possible – your customer service will be stellar.
On the flip side, when I did a poorer job responding – sometimes days between checking emails because I was so busy with other stuff – business died down. Big-time. Big-time lesson learned here; dial in, be prompt and business will grow as will your rep for stellar customer service. Folks dig dealing with helpful bloggers.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Ryan
Ryan, this is great stuff and captures the essence of the article! I’m glad you commented!
I think you summed it up perfectly when you say: dial in, be prompt and business will grow. This is something that is lost along the way to bigger sales numbers.
Its really a nice post and the examples shown in this post have really helped everyone to understand how to reply to a customer very effectively and creatively i really liked example of samsung . The given reply to shane by samsung is really good funny and creative.
thanks shout me cloud
Thank you, Laksh 🙂
hi Karan, amazing blog lessons on social media 🙂
Thanks Pranav, hope this article was valuable to you!
Thanks Karan sir
For providing quality information, please sir provide information ,I have started e-commerce website and how I get organic traffic in my website
Thanks Chirag!
Focus on the basics first, getting a good website up, a strong foundation of SEO and an effective outreach program to kick things off.
Later, you can build on your successes and pretty soon you’ll have to hire your own customer response team, to whom you can refer this article for pointers 😉
Good luck out there!