subject: Social Media And The Customer Experience [print this page] Twitter and Facebook are playing an incredible role in bringing companies closer to their customers than ever before. It is now a fact that to get your business right you need to get your customer experience to be the right one. Otherwise, you may be playing disaster recovery in a world that is one click away from a social media disaster.
You need to be attuned to your customers, know what they think about your brand and their expectations. Getting customer insights, when infused into the organizational stream, result in an outstanding brand experience for your customers. More and more companies are now leveraging on the power of social media to improve their customer brand experience.
Why is Social Media Important?
Reach a majority of your customers through social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. In a survey conducted by Nielsen Online, social networking and blogging emerged as the fourth most popular activity online surpassing personal email.
According to another statistic, on a daily basis, phones give over 6000 customer connections,live chat over 400, but social platforms offer 1,100,000 customer connections per day!
Customers are sharing their opinions and views about your brand with their friends and followers (who could be your customers, prospects, or people who can impact your business) through these platforms. People are more influenced by the opinions of their friends and trusted ones while considering a brand. As such a positive or negative customer sentiment impacts your brand substantially.
Social media channels are important to express the voice of organizations as well. These platforms allow an open conversation between companies and customers. Often, senior leadership including CEOs form part of social media strategies. This method of interaction enables you to connect with your customers, create brand transparency, and build brand trust and longevity.
A good example of social media leverage is Zappos, the online shoe retailer known for its WOW customer service. Zappos has best practices in place to ensure good people-people connections through social media channels. The company has a Twitter page with updates tweeted by every Zappos employee. The focus is more on developing personal connections rather than brand selling and as such there are no rigid guidelines on the nature of tweets.
Another recent example that conveys the power of social media in creating brand awareness is that of Procter & Gambles Old Spice Man (this guy is great!). The video AD featuring towel-clad NFL player Isaiah Mustafa promoting the body wash defines new levels of marketing. This campaign created sensation with its personalized touch that had the Old Spice Man answering customer tweets. Custom videos were created in response to customer tweets. There were over 180 custom videos of which 2 videos received a phenomenal 25,000,000 total views. Twitter account of Old Spice (@oldspice) had 90,000 followers. These statistics once again emphasize the reach of social media channels.
A sound social media strategy is essential to drive customer-centric change in the organization. It is time to build brand loyalty the social way!
