At the end of last year, I endured the sort of customer disservice experience that is all too familiar to South African consumers. A minor insurance claim became a logistical nightmare when my insurer dropped the ball, leaving me in a tangled web of unanswered messages, call centre back-and-forth, and general frustration.
After weeks of this, I eventually gave up, and vented my displeasure on social media. Within hours I'd had a response, and within days the problem had been resolved to my satisfaction, and at no small cost to the insurer.
This was far from a unique case. So many people I speak to echo this experience: customer services problems resolved through social media. Why is that?
Well, let's start by turning the problem around, and instead of asking why customer service is so bad, look at why social media is so effective.
The answer lies in the nature of the operation. Call centres are a cost: a grudging expense suffered by companies and one to be relentlessly optimised. There's a reason why sweatshop-style outsourced call centres in poor countries are so popular, and it's not because the customer service is better.
Social media, meanwhile, is usually managed by the PR or marketing department, which sits far higher up the food chain than the call centre. These departments are the custodians of the brand. They have seniority, responsibility, and budget. And they have the ear of the board.
Historically, when a customer managed to penetrate the system far enough to come to the attention of the brand owners, it signified an exception warranting urgent attention, and so the teams will take extraordinary steps to keep customers happy, even if doing so results in a net cost, because potential brand damage outweighs that.
Angry birds tweet loudest
Social media, the great leveller, plugs every customer directly into that upper stratum of the business. And just one angry voice has the potential to go viral, undoing countless hours of careful brand positioning, so the crisis team swings into action and takes remedial action more often than they would like.
The core of the problem is that, by the time it gets to social media, it's too late. The customer is angry, because the preferred service channel has failed. Now you're not handling a query, you're fighting a fire.
There's a reason why sweatshop-style outsourced call centres in poor countries are so popular.
I have spoken to numerous marketing executives who all say the same thing: dealing with customers is the worst part of their job. They hate it, it's expensive, and it's constantly undermining their work. And it's getting worse, because more and more customers are starting to realise that taking their anger to social media is getting results. And this applies even if the customer is completely in the wrong. Many brand teams will bend over backwards to accommodate a client where a call centre agent would not, because their remits are so different.
There are a couple of problems here. Cost and scale are decidedly against you. The marketing team handling the Twitter account is a great deal more expensive, per head, than the call centre. You don't want those resources wasted on handling basic customer service queries. And as more customers turn to social media, it risks just drowning out your other activities anyway.
But, does it have to be this way?
Answer me this: who do you call when you have a problem with Gmail, or Facebook, or almost any cloud-scale business? The answer is, you don't - many of them operate no call centre at all, or one which is limited to specific lines of business. You turn first to the self-help facilities online, and eventually, escalate to an online support agent via e-mail or chat. And for millions and millions of customers, that works. It works because the groundwork is constantly optimised and analysed.
Where other companies squeeze cents out of call centre operations, these guys A/B test. But the purpose is the same: business efficiency.
And I do acknowledge the counter-argument - that customer service is important and call centres can be a valuable part of support and so on, but unfortunately, that's the theory. The harsh fact is that lots of South African businesses have terrible call centres, poor customer service records, and their marketing teams are facing increasing pressure putting out fires in social media.
And if the trend really is accelerating, maybe it's time to embrace the change. Build out fast, effective self-service help facilities and empower your brand management operation to address escalation before it's out of control. Not as exceptions, but as part of their portfolio. Review the expectations for your call centre and their KPIs, because ruthless efficiency isn't working: ask your marketing execs.
The alternative isn't pretty, because social recommendations are steadily becoming more central to people's buying habits. At some point, the fire-fighting team will be overwhelmed, your brand will be damaged beyond their control, and the increasing power of social recommendations will drive business elsewhere.
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