Talk Digi To Me 101Managing Customer Complaints

We’re back on the topic of social media and I’m going to talk about managing customer complaints! If you’re lucky, your business might get a bad review or negative comments once in a blue moon. Some, get them by the dozens every day. In order to help us turn bad commenters into brand champions, let’s start with the theory of NPS. 

Transcript

We’re back on the topic of social media and I’m going to talk about managing customer complaints! If you’re lucky, your business might get a bad review or negative comments once in a blue moon. Some, get them by the dozens every day. In order to help us turn bad commenters into brand champions, let’s start with the theory of NPS. 

Are you currently measuring your NPS, or Net Promoter Score? It’s a single question survey that asks “Would you recommend our product or service to a friend?” in order to measure customer experience. NPS surveys measure how many of your customers are Promoters, how many are Passives and… how many are Detractors

Now that you have some background on how NPS works… let’s go on a journey of converting your detractors into real brand champions. 

Every bad comment is an opportunity to highlight an aspect of the customer journey that could be improved. The thing about your Detractors is, that they tend to speak the loudest.

The best way to deal with negative reviews or comments, is to move the conversation to a more direct method of communication, such as direct messaging.

There, inquire for more details about the issue, and establish which department in your organisation will be best suited to handle the complaint. Then, route the individual through the most appropriate method of resolution. Be sure to move complaints swiftly and compassionately through the right channels.

Once you’ve done this and the customer gets a resolution, you may find that your Detractor returns as a brand champion! 

Creating A Response Matrix

 I get so many social media queries every day. I can’t keep up with responding to all of them. Do I need to hire a social media manager just for that?

You might find it useful to have a Response Matrix for frequently asked questions developed for your social media team to be able to respond to, and re-route comments, queries and complaints they receive online. 

Social Media Manager at Robinson Creative, Alec Begg, will tell you a bit about this:

A Response Matrix is like the script the call centre agent follows. Your social media manager can follow this guideline when they pick up comments online and know what to say, and where to direct the complainant to.

For some businesses, you will need both a Response Matrix, and a dedicated personnel.

Some industries face a high volume of customer complaints channelled via social media. Banking and finance, telecommunications, insurance, tend to be examples of companies whose social media profiles are often amplified with complaints. 

While encouraging customers to use the appropriate channels for queries may help quell some commenting, it’s important for these companies to have procedures in place to manage complaints. 

The role of this dedicated customer service representative is to log queries and complaints, and route them to the appropriate departments. The benefit here is that unlike an external social media team, your customer service representative is more knowledgeable of your products and your procedures and may be able to drive resolution more quickly. 

Prevention is better than cure

Finally, there may be instances when you’re going to have a planned service outage, an early closure, your website, call centre or app might be unavailable temporarily, or your customers are experiencing high wait times. In the case of known situations like these where you anticipate customers may have a poor experience, communication about these lapses in service on social media, your website, or on radio can be helpful to your customers. 

Preventing a negative reaction in this sense, is better than trying to cure a surge in complaints to your call centre or social media profiles.  

So if you’re interested in understanding more about the NPS, and potentially introducing an NPS survey to your business, let’s talk some more about that directly. Or if you already have a social media team but are interested in having a Response Matrix developed to better manage your queries and comments, you can get in touch at 246 266-4847, or email me at carlie@myrobinsoncreative.com.