It’s a strange dichotomy — while a customer may spend many thousands on various marketing strategies and have just a few Twitter followers, another may spend only a meagre amount and yet have a band of keen Twitter followers. This means that the success of a brand does not always depend on the ‘best customer’.
Nonetheless very few companies see the social media as a customer service channel. Many marketeers do not realise that most customers are on the social media. Consider Twitter. People love this form of social media and the number of Tweets has shot up from 95 million last year to above 200 million. And if surveys are anything to go by, then 42 per cent of people use Twitter to find out about various products and services, another 42 per cent log on to find out about products and services, 28 per cent Tweet to find out about sales and discounts and 19 per cent to seek customer help.
There has also been a qualitative change in social media — it is no longer preferred exclusively by the youth. Most Twitter users are above 35, and this age group is very critical for marketeers. “That’s primarily because today’s generation uses Twitter to discuss everything under the sun. It is used as a platform to discuss not only their likes and dislikes but also share brand experiences,” says Saumya Chattopadhyay, director, Strategic Planning, Ogilvy Africa.
However, carving out a social media strategy is no cakewalk. It is not as simple as opening an account on Facebook or LinkedIn. In order for a company to make social media strategies work, it needs to carve out an automated process so that all Facebook comments are evaluated. Then the comments need to be channelised to the appropriate person or department after which the positive responses are re-posted on these channels.
Consider, for example, Starbucks. It has created “My Starbucks Idea” — a website that permits viewers to give suggestions. These suggestions are then voted on by other customers of Starbucks. The best suggestions are highlighted by the company. It also introduced the “Ideas in Action” blog that also updates customers about the status of the suggested changes. This helps the company to have a good grasp of customer feedback. “An important point to remember here is that you don’t need to delight all your customers. You should try and remove dissatisfaction and that is an important part of delivering a positive experience,” says Chattopadhyay.
Also a customer needs to be prompt in his interaction with customers. If a customer Tweets, the marketeer needs to respond with a Tweet and then move the discussion on to a private forum. And if a customer uses more than one channel like web chat or e-mail, then the marketeer should do the same and hop across channels. What is important is that the marketeer must give a prompt response. For a simple question like “how long do you take to deliver a pizza?” it is important to give a prompt response. “Studies have also revealed that such immediate responses breed feelings of loyalty towards the company,” says Chattopadhyay.
Customer service should be transparent too, even on social media. “Customers do not want to wait and marketeers must remember this,” says M. Deb, an advertising professional. Rather customer queries must be addressed immediately on social media platforms.
It is very important to identify your high net worth customer. And then create a strong customer service on social networking platforms like Twitter. This way, marketeers will be able to address customer issues and grievances quickly. It’s also important for brands to start examining a new metric of social influence. Through this, they can determine which customers are likely to influence other customers’ purchase decisions. So when a customer makes a contact, you should not only have access to his demographic info, but also the person’s social graph. This information will be useful when you are trying to build your base in social media marketing.
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to Tweet!

The writer is a well-known industry watcher