The Cultural Disconnect in customer service

Recent Genesys and Datamonitor research shows that UK companies lose £15bn per year as a result of poor customer service at a time when the growth of smartphones (particularly the iPhone) has significantly altered the customer-business dynamic. Consumers have knowledge at their fingertips with instant access to a range of services whenever they want them, and this ‘social media effect’ makes customers expect instant customer service
There are clear disconnects. Brands are always looking to engage with consumers through the latest channels, but many are not equipped to handle customer service enquiries through them because of their slow take-up of cross-channel solutions and enablers for customer service.
Most customer service strategies are still traditional: knowingly or unknowingly they primarily target the middle-aged and the middle-class. A strong social media strategy – essential to bridge the disconnect with customers – requires contact centres to change their operating methodology.

Is there really the need for a change?
The infamous United Airlines attack campaign was a seminal moment in the shift of consumer power. The “United Breaks Guitars” YouTube campaign received close to ten million views. It proved the need for change and made it clear that customers now have the ability to demand service ‘their way’ – and can hold companies to account for it.
To show the extreme distances that need to be made up: some contact centre agents don’t even have access to the internet, let alone information from social media, blog and networking sites. But this is where this new breed of empowered consumer spends so much time, talks about brands and expects customer service.
‘Social Media for Brand’ research tells us that around 85 percent of social media users will engage with a brand as well as their peers – often in a purely marketing capacity; 53 percent will use social media for customer service. This cultural shift to using social media makes bridging the disconnect and integrating this new communications channel a major priority – both for the traditional sales channel and the brand it sells.
At the heart of a strategic social media approach there must be a cultural shift. Social media has become a whole new customer service channel, and companies and their call centres need to build teams of the right people to operate it.
It’s not just a case of responding to questions – social media customer service is about being an active member of these user communities: monitoring and contributing to conversations and being able to identify when someone has a problem before they even approach you with it.

Possible Solutions
It is already possible to implement a strategy to address these critical short-falls. Existing solutions can be adapted to feed Twitter or Facebook updates/messages into the platform in the same way as SMS messages.
By delivering social media conversations and contextual information into the customer service mix in the same way as an email or a fax, businesses can create a more rewarding and relevant experience for the customer. The payoff for providing this will be long-term customer loyalty and the revenue benefits that this brings with it.
Consumers still want a human element – in fact, human service is not generally the root cause of customer dissatisfaction. But consumers in their service experience also want to use Twitter, phone, emails and many more channels.
For businesses and call centres to re-tool their customer service teams to be able to deal with this doesn’t mean massive technology implementations. Nor does it mean employing new, potentially younger, agents. It needs companies to adjust the way that they perceive and measure customer service, because social media customer service starts before the customer even makes contact. Without a new approach, the gap between what the customer is thinking and what the enterprise is doing will only continue to get wider.