Does your Favourite Brand get it?
I have always been a shopper. In my teens you would find me at the local shopping centre every weekend buying clothes and beauty products that I probably didn’t need. Fast forward to sixth form, I discovered ASOS, eBay and PayPal where I realised not only can I buy stuff online, I can also start to make money off all those frivolous in person purchases.
Fast forward many years later, online shopping is my new normal as is online customer service. This typically means from the comfort of my laptop throughout the day. Some brands I believe have cracked the digital customer experience code incredibly well and others, well it’s like we don’t even exist. In 2020 I find this weird, not even unacceptable, but how does a brand not have a well defined digital customer care strategy?
Case in point I sent a private message to a fashion brand as I wanted the link to a skirt I saw on Instagram. Five days later I am still waiting for a response whilst they are responding to tweets on their main feed. Why is this happening? Disclaimer — I spent over 7 years of my working life at Conversocial — a digital customer care platform, so maybe I am more invested than your average shopper, but if you have the right tools, people and strategy in place I don’t believe any customer should have to go longer than 24 hours to receive a response. Even if you cannot respond via a human — automation is so readily available.
So how can brands ensure they get it right?
First and foremost if you do not have a digital care strategy in place please create one. If you don’t know how, please hire an expert to guide you — it will save you the headache in the long run, trust me on this!
Figure out what works best for your customers in terms of contacting you. I see too many brands choosing a strategy that works best for them but doesn’t take into consideration what could actually work best for their customer.
Be inspired by other brands but please do what works best for you and your audience. Example your brand has a heavy Instagram presence — then maybe create an Instagram CS handle. Again this has to make sense for your brand.
Please use best in class tools for your digital customer service. One of the reasons I stayed at Conversocial for “so long” is because it was (is) the Rolls-Royce of social customer care. If you use half hearted platforms I believe that is how your social care strategy will manifest. A half hearted offering.
You may think customers don’t notice or even mind, however anyone can get a customer to buy a product once but to have a repeat customer is a combined skill of a great product but also excellent service at every touch point. Don’t let that go over your head folks.
If you only do one thing today ask yourself — are we doing what is best for the customer here? If no, figure out why and adjust accordingly and if yes, I still believe you could be doing more.
Until next time. Theresa
