Customer service should be easy, shouldn’t it? It’s just common sense, right?

But there are many different interpretations of what constitutes common sense – my common sense might not be yours and vice versa.

Take an example that we will all have been through or seen at some point of a young child throwing a tantrum in a public. There are lots of books and experts that will tell you what a parent should do if this happens.. but which one do you follow? Walk away? Get down on the floor with them? Pick them up and hold them till they stop? Give in so they stop embarrassing you?

While all of these methods will have a sound rationale behind them the most important thing you need to do is know how this child responds and what will most effectively stop the tantrum while maintaining boundaries.

It’s the same with customer service. Not every customer will react the same way – sometimes you just need to band-aid the situation and sometimes you need to be a little flexible.

With that in mind, help your staff to help your customers and therefore you:Clearly define outputs – what does “finished” look like?

• Usually along the lines of a satisfied customer.
• Clearly define expected behaviours – what you should and shouldn’t say to a customer.
• Allow staff a little discretion – give them a little leeway for the individual touch.

Now, think about in this social media terms… if you phone a call centre, there is every chance that the person you are talking to is being treated like a drone and they’ve been given a script to work from.

The promise of social media is to remain human

If you Tweet and someone replies from the company in question, how many companies have got as far as preparing social media scripts. Not many I would bet and also hope – the promise of social media is to remain human.

So, what companies need to be thinking about for making this stuff work in Twitter or Facebook (yes Nestle, I’m looking at you) is to make sure there are savvy staff in place that have been well trained and briefed.

If you are a company and you want to make this work, stop reducing customer service to the lowest common denominator or treating it as a cost centre.

Tell your staff clearly what finished looks like, what behaviours are expected of them and then let them go. It’s easy, it’s just common sense…

Anyone who has ever hired or managed staff will tell you that common sense is a rare commodity – where do you get your supply?

How good are you at listening? Really listening?

And what if we separate you the person from the company/body/organisation you work for?  Is your company hearing what its customers are saying?

These might seem strange questions, but social media means it is becoming an incredibly important skill for companies and organisations to master. And quickly.

Let’s look at some examples where customers are delivering a very clear, uncomplicated message, and where it seems the companies involved are failing to listen to learn.

It’s probably a cheap shot to single at an easy target to single out the finance sector – but it’s fun and having done some work in the finance sector in recent months I recognise how sensitive these organisations are starting to become in the post bailout world.

So, please step forward Marbles and Thomas Cook.

I remember the Marbles credit card being popular back in the 90s, but when I went to Review Centre it became clear why it might not be as popular as it once was. If you were in charge over there, how happy would you be about this?

Can you feel the love customers have for this brand?

The attentive among you might be wondering why I am classing holiday company Thomas Cook as a finance institution – well, like so many others, they have extended their brand to a credit card for customers. It’s just a shame the customers rather seem to wish they hadn’t bothered!

How does this help the Thomas Cook brand?

Put yourself in the place of the brand managers at either of those institutions – how would you feel if you saw that? What would you do about it?

Well, Marbles and Thomas Cook seem to have chosen to ignore it, which means that awful customer feedback is sitting there unmoderated, radiating nastiness and negativity towards the brands. Not ideal.

Of course, you don’t need to respond to every piece of criticism of the web, but it would certainly be wise to be aware of it.

The reality, of course, is probably that neither company is aware of the ill-will being sent in their direction because they probably aren’t listening. And that’s a shame. Think how many people will see that over time and have their buying decisions swayed. Think how that will negatively affect the money these companies will be spending in other areas such as good search engine optimisation.

While the unvarnished opinion of customers might be unpalatable, surely it is better to know what is being said and to start feeding that information back into the business. And as marketing guru Seth Godin rightly points out, the most effective time to make acustomer service intervention is when that customer is not happy.

In another post we can look at how you can assess the relative authority of any website, how much traffic it might get (in crude terms) and whether you should pay attention or let sleeping dogs lie. Alternatively, give us a call and we can help you now.