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Social Media Week: Peach Digital discusses how to embrace social media in customer service

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

September 20, 2011 | 3 min read

The way to respond to complaints over Twitter, how to effectively use social media to retain customers and the fizziness of Pepsi were all subjects discussed at Peach Digital’s social media week event in Glasgow: Embracing social media in customer service.

Led by social and email marketing manager Jessica Knowlton Bell and SEM manager Jack Porter-Smith, the presentation explored how social media can be used to expand customer service and rules that brands must keep in mind while tweeting.

Porter-Smith looked at how brands should use social media as an opportunity. He described how it is unacceptable for companies not to have a website adding: “In two or three years, it will be unacceptable not to have a social media presence.”

Customer retention was named as something which customer services can tap into using social media, with suggestions given including offering rewards and thanking followers, which he said would impress consumers, as well as gaining traffic and conversion.

It was suggested that in the future, hotels could ask consumers for a Twitter handle as well as name and email address when booking; and tweet consumers to confirm the booking, the day before to let them know the weather and say the hotel is looking forward to having them visit, and afterwards to thank the consumer. This was suggested as a more social and personal route than a standard email, which the majority do not read.

Porter-Smith also discussed the return on investment for social media, saying that social ROI is Y over X, where social investment- 10% of all social media spend = X, and social revenue- 10% of search and direct traffic revenue = Y.

Knowlton Bell looked at how to effectively complain using Twitter, and then how customer service should respond to these complaints. Using an example of Starbucks, she explained how it is important to be prompt in the reply, as well as giving a channel for the consumer to further discuss the issue.

As an experiment, Pepsi was tweeted with the message ‘..it's too fizzy, what are you going to do about it?@pepsi’ to see if the company would reply by the end of the presentation. It did not, although there was a tweet agreeing that Pepsi was too fizzy.

She stressed the importance of using social media: “Social media humanises a brand to its market…it cuts out the middleman between a brand and consumer.”

Tips given to help brands on social media included doing field research: “It’s really important to find out what people are doing on social channels, what competition is doing and most important what consumers are doing.”; developing a social strategy based on what you want your consumers to think about you; leverage conversations; and being unforgettable.

Social media week is taking place in Glasgow and a further 11 cities around the world between 19-23 September.

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Peach Digital Limited has been operating since 2000, providing website design, development and digital marketing services.

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