There’s a lot of talk about the future of customer service these days, with social media driving much of the conversation: Customer service is the “new marketing”. It’s a major driver of a great (or lousy) customer experience. Millennials are demanding more of it, but on their terms. It’s vastly underfunded when compared with marketing spend.
In addition, Jay Baer – previously a well-known marketing guy – taught us to “Hug Your Haters” in his fantastic new book of the same name, while Social Media Marketing World – clearly a marketing conference given the name – included a Customer Service track for the first time this year after featuring Baer and fellow customer service guru John DiJulius in keynotes last year.
It’s not just all talk, either. Brands have (mostly) figured out that they need to offer customer service on social media, with some of the best being featured on the Focus on Customer Service Podcast hosted by me and Dan Moriarty.
On a recent podcast episode, we interviewed Conversocial CEO Joshua March who said that messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat and WeChat in China are “the future of customer service”. His argument was that messaging apps have two main advantages over “traditional” social media: they’re private (which brands love because it keeps complaints out of the public eye) and they’re persistent (which customers love because they don’t have to repeat their problem or even their account information to multiple agents).
But are messaging apps really “the future of customer service”? That bold statement made me question if all brands’ customer service efforts might be wasted if March’s prediction is accurate.
That’s not what he was saying, of course, but I could almost hear the collective anxiety/anticipation/gasping of brands saying, “Darn it, we finally figured out this social customer care thing and now we have to pivot again to private messaging?”
The reality, though, is that many brands are already doing private messaging – in the form of click-to-chat on their website or mobile app. So maybe Messenger and WhatsApp are just extensions of that, but meeting customers where they are instead of waiting for them to come to us. And click-to-chat generally gets higher customer experience ratings from customers than other channels.
Another key benefit of messaging apps is that they eliminate the asynchronous back-and-forth of e-mail or social media and replace it with real-time resolution. So as 24-hour response times in e-mail have given way to an hour or, if you’re best-in-class, less than 15 minutes in social media, messaging apps essentially bring that time down to nearly zero. This is a great experience for customers.
From a technology perspective, too, the proliferation of multiple messaging apps should not cause more complexity for brands. “I think the nice thing about messaging platforms is that you can be pretty consistent in how you’re responding to customers,” says March, contrasting this with the varied nuances of Twitter and Facebook, like character limits and hashtags.
So messaging apps have a lot of advantages. But if they end up not being the future of customer service, what then? Bots? Hopefully not, as that would definitely unravel most of the progress brands have made in the past few years. Customers now easily raise issues and provide feedback that they wouldn’t have before.
“We are not at the stage yet where you can have a really comprehensive chat bot that would work for customer service,” says March. Ironically, computer-generated chat sessions have been tried before too. “The customer experience was negative,” March says, “and so customers would end up phoning or e-mailing instead.”
Online communities? They’ve been around for decades, but only a few brands like Intuit have significantly changed customer behavior. March notes that some brands are now testing social media and online communities, letting “experts” handle customer questions instead. It definitely has potential in the future if we can scale it effectively.
I think the true answer to the question is that the customer service pie is expanding. Customers today have countless ways to give feedback and expect brands to respond anytime, anywhere. As March highlights in the podcast, social media has dramatically shifted how people communicate.
The good news for brands is that channels like Twitter offer lower-cost alternatives to traditional customer service channels like the telephone, and that customers are willing to spend more with brands who respond to customer service inquiries on Twitter. And with both Twitter and Facebook investing heavily in customer service functionality, the brand and customer experience on both is only getting better.
Most brands aren’t seeing a big drop in customer service calls; social media still represents a small fraction of inquiries.
Yes, millennials’ general distaste for phone and email may shift focus to social channels eventually, but for now, these traditional methods remain the most popular. The customer service landscape is expanding, yet old-fashioned channels still dominate.
Customers now raise issues and provide feedback more easily than before.. In the past, customers called brands only when they were having problems. Today, customers seek personalization before buying and want their feedback valued afterward.. Smart brands seize the inherent opportunity in this change by using that feedback to continuously improve their products and experience.
Ultimately, it’s going to be the customer that drives change; brands will just have to go along for the ride. “If you forget what the customer wants, they can easily rant online or call, increasing your costs,” March warns. In other words, deliver a great experience digitally or it’s back to the old-fashioned way.
