{"id":523,"date":"2008-06-29T11:33:21","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T15:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/?p=523"},"modified":"2008-06-29T11:33:21","modified_gmt":"2008-06-29T15:33:21","slug":"blogging-social-media-customer-service-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/2008\/06\/29\/blogging-social-media-customer-service-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging, social media & customer service (Part 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 3: Impact of Social Media on Customer Care<\/strong><\/p>\n

Customers are engaging with social media. So are many companies. For example, nearly 12 percent of the US Fortune 500 companies have a blog of some kind. The benefits that accrue for both individuals and companies include deeper relationships with peers and customers, increased awareness of the brand, whether personal, professional or corporate, broader and deeper professional networks, improved search engine rankings and increased traffic to the website.<\/p>\n

But what about the specific impact on customer care? How has the social media explosion changed the playing field for customer service and consumer affairs professionals?<\/p>\n

As noted earlier, postings on customer care experiences influence purchase decisions. In the SNCR study<\/a>, 74% reported that they choose companies and brands based on others\u2019 customer care experiences shared online.<\/p>\n

\"\".<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> Society for New Communications Research, Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The SNCR study also reveals an opportunity. While consumers feel that one person can influence many about a bad customer care experience, only 30% of the respondents thought that businesses take customer opinions seriously. And that\u2019s the opportunity \u2013 to start listening and acting on what customers may be saying online.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> Society for New Communications Research, Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This is a scary idea for many — indeed most \u2013 companies, mostly because we tend to focus on the negative. And there is negative, no question. There aren\u2019t many people in business who don\u2019t know the story of Dell Hell, and how one prominent blogger\u2019s negative postings about Dell customer service exploded into a serious PR problem for the computer maker in 2005.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not all bad. Customers leave unsolicited positive comments about the products and services they love every day on blogs, review sites and discussion forums. And for the most part, companies are just as silent.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But not Dell. The company launched its Direct2Dell blog<\/a> in July 2006 to engage directly and publicly with customers about problems. Though the blog had a rocky start, Dell succeeded in showing even its most severe critics that it was both paying attention and acting on customer feedback. The company monitors consumer sentiment in the blogosphere and has seen its negative rating decline from 49 percent negative in August 2006 to 21 percent negative in January 2008 (Source: Presentation at New Comm Forum 08 by Richard Binhammer, Dell)<\/em><\/p>\n

There are two very important lessons from the Dell experience. First, top management support is absolutely essential. Customer feedback must be actionable. Dell had that support from Michael Dell. Second, your best customer is often the formerly unhappy customer. Jeff Jarvis, the blogger who launched Dell Hell in 2005, wrote a positive piece<\/a> about the company\u2019s efforts for BusinessWeek in October 2007 and commented on his own blog Buzz Machine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAfter giving Dell hell two years ago, I may well be accused of throwing them a wet kiss now. It\u2019s a positive piece. But it\u2019s hard not to praise them when they ended up doing everything I was pushing in my open letter to Michael Dell. I\u2019m not saying that I caused that, just that we ended up agreeing and they ended up seeing the value in listening to and ceding control to customers. They reached out to bloggers; they blogged; they found ways to listen to and follow the advice of their customers. They joined the conversation. That\u2019s all we asked.\u201d (October 18, 2007)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

—<\/p>\n

In part 4, we’ll discuss what customer service should do about and with social media.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tags: blogs<\/a>, social media<\/a>, dell<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 3: Impact of Social Media on Customer Care Customers are engaging with social media. So are many companies. For example, nearly 12 percent of the US Fortune 500 companies have a blog of some kind. The benefits that accrue for both individuals and companies include deeper relationships with peers and customers, increased awareness of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[5,45,46,40],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}