Yesterday Jason Falls over at Social Media Explorer wrote a post about whether brands were playing favorites on social media. The problem is that many customers have problems, but often it seems that people who are influencers – who have a popular blog or twitter feed – will get responses from companies that normal people can’t seem to get through normal customer support channels. I commented that right now many of the people monitoring social media at companies are higher up and actually have the power to fix problems.
Why is this exactly? Why do people have to complain on Twitter or their blog or to their influencer friends to get their problems solved? Most of us have had an experience with a customer support system where the employee had to follow a script and wasn’t allowed to make any kind of decision. You usually have to try to get up to a manager or another department and even then there’s no guarantee that you’ll get any kind of decision.
What would happen if you allowed your customer support employees to make decisions? You’d have to provide them with some guidelines, obviously, but what if they could actually help your customers? Many years ago I used to work a few hours a week at Bed, Bath & Beyond (ok, mostly for the discount). They allowed their employees to give up to a 5% discount to any customer for any reason (usually having to do with a flaw in the merchandise). Do you know how happy it makes a customer when they come up to you to show you a flaw in a product, ready for a fight, and you just give them a 5% discount without arguing? How many of those customers were repeat customers? I’d imagine quite a few. I’m sure BBB made up the 5% discount with increased sales from happy customers.
All the employees at your company will influence your brand and reputation. If you give them the power to make decisions that help customers, it will only help your company in the long run.
(photo by dan taylor @ FlickrCC)
Technorati tags: brand, brand reputation, brand strategy, business, customer service, customer-centric, customer support, marketing, strategy