Joe Cothrel, Vice President and Chief Community Officer at Lithium, discussed “social support” and its impact on today’s organizations during his presentation at the 2015 Customer Care Leadership Forum in Toronto on March 25. In his presentation, Cothrel pointed out that social support occurs both via social media and through an organization’s website.
5. THE CHALLENGE
Buyers are forever changed.
Brands compete with a new kind of ‘great’
experience.
Extreme
Expectations
6. WHAT THIS MEANS
expect a
response from
brands to Tweet73%
expect a response
within an hour72%
feel more negative
when not responded
to in timely manner40%
of complaints go
unanswered*70%
*Maritz Research
Customers have
Extreme Expectations
Unresponsiveness Poses Risk
to Revenue & Reputation
9. calls are
1 min, 48 sec
shorter on average following a visit to the
community
With the help of Lithium, we are building a program where
we go beyond providing service to our customers via traditional
contact methods. With the introduction of our Help Forum,
Facebook and Twitter channels we are now enabling an all-round
social customer experience.
Stephen Marshall
Community Operations Manager, Sky
29% of
surveyed community
members say they no
longer need to call for
help CSAT
87%
10. customer retention
improved by
25%
$10M
along with other customer experience
initiatives, Barclaycard Ring contributed
to
decreased customer
complaints by
50%
in annual benefit
Barclaycard Ring’s innovative levels of simplicity, transparency,
and service are impacting the way we do business…we believe this
is the way all companies will engage with customers in the future.
Paul Wilmore
General Manager Consumer Markets, Barclaycard
12. 12LITHIUM CONFIDENTIAL
Socially-Infused Website
how brandstransformtheirapproach tomanaging the social
customer experience
stage 1
foundational
stage 3
operationalizing
stage 4
extending
stage 5
transforming
stage 2
experimental
listen to understand
the social opportunity
engage on existing social
networks
operationalize the
conversation
extend the business value
to drive business impact
realize world class
performance
holistic enterprise social
social media monitoring
branded community
facebook & twitter
integrations
enterprise social solutions
build a listening engine build a content engine build a conversation engine build an experience engine build an innovation engine
listen-to-target, focus efforts on
improving acquisition of new
customers
listen-to-engage, invest in social
channels, activate current & new
customers
listen, incorporate feedback, modify
experience, invest on-domain, improve
internal operations
listen, incorporate feedback, design
for the customer, enlist external
participants to create brand value
listen, design for the customer,
empower customers as trusted
content and business
co-creators
13. THREE KEY PRODUCTS
SOCIAL CHANNEL RESPONSE BRANDED COMMUNITIES
ANALYTICS &
KLOUT
Connect Engage Understand
And we want our packages delivered in the next 24-48 hours or we’re going to filter it out of our search.
As the holiday’s approach, I’m sure most of you have already switched over your ecommerce sites just to make sure you are capitalizing on the free shipping that’s expected this time of year.
Because who should have to pay to have a box delivered to your home? No, we’re not going to do that.
We are incredibly impatient and if the brand doesn’t deliver in what we want, we are going we share it.
73% of people expect a response from a brand on Twitter and 72% of them want it within the hour.
Sky- (Sky Help Forum): http://helpforum.sky.com/
Objective: Having achieved success with providing support via community forums, Sky wanted to unlock the potential of social media customer service by extending their support to Facebook and Twitter.
Approach: Integrated Twitter and Facebook feeds into the community and allowed customers to provide solutions regardless of the platform where query was entered. If a query required sensitive account information to be exchanged, Sky staff provided a private 1:1 live chat session to resolve the issue.
Results: Customers reported a 90%+ satisfaction rate when interacting via live chat. Sky service tweets increased by 144% and Sky Facebook service interactions increased by 54%. Calls on average are 1 min, 48 sec shorter following a visit to the community -> equating to 570 hours saved over 19,000 calls, or 10 additional team members required to support them.
2012 Forrester Groundswell submission: http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Lithium-View-blog/Sky-s-Peer-to-Peer-Community-makes-sound-business-sense/ba-p/59190
From 2012 Lithy:
Sky’s Social Customer Support journey started with the launch of the Sky Help Forum (http://helpforum.sky.com/), on 25th October 2010. Here at Sky, service through Social Media means our customers can be confident in finding answers to their issues, from our community and staff, irrespective of the type of question or the complexity of the problem.
Since launch, our forum has grown extremely quickly. With the realisation of the potential we could unlock through Social Media customer service, we decided to extend this support to Facebook and Twitter in March 2011.
Our mission –
At Sky we strive for our customers to ‘Believe in Better’ and as one of the UK’s largest broadcasting, telephone and broadband companies, we aim to lead the way in customer service.
The customer can simply type their query on to our Help Forum, Facebook and Twitter pages and then await a response. And the power of the social community means that our super-users and other customers often solve many of the questions.
For any issues that cannot be resolved by our community, we have a team of in-house Sky experts ready to assist. Hello to quick and easy resolutions through Social Media!
Our Highlights –
30,000 registered users by June 2011
More than doubled that to 70,000 registered users by March 2012
Over 150 new registered users each day
1 million thread views per week
144% increase in Sky service Tweets since July 2011
54% growth in Sky Facebook service interactions since July 2011
Sky social media teams’ deal with 1000-1300 total interactions each day
Launched in February this year, we are the first company in the UK to offer single-use Live Customer Chat for one-to-one private case resolution
We have had 90-100% customer satisfaction/resolution for our social media Live Chat service
Consistently over achieving our customer satisfaction and customer resolution goals across all channels
Broadening our reach –
In October 2011, we started listening to our social customers out with our branded channels. This meant that we can look to provide advice and assistance to people that mention Sky services or products within their Tweets, Facebook updates and other forum posts.
We are currently able to respond within forums that aren’t official Sky channels. We also have the tools to monitor tweets and Facebook posts about Sky from customers, and are able to help and respond when needed.
Seeing the query through to the end – When our customers ask questions in our Help Forum or social media channels, we don’t want anything to get in the way of providing a complete end-to-end resolution.
If a customer’s query requires account sensitive information to be exchanged, our staff are happy to privately interact with that customer. But this requires a one-to-one interaction with one of our Sky staff members and isn’t something for a public area.
To solve this, we have introduced an innovative solution to deal with more sensitive social support issues.
Sky is the first company in the UK to use one time chat links which direct the customer back to the original advisor they were speaking to on the help forum, Facebook or Twitter. Once the customer has clicked the one-time link they immediately enter a private chat session so they can have a real-time confidential discussion. This ensures that the Sky team member can have access to the customer’s Sky account and share sensitive information, which wouldn’t be possible in the forum.
Since we launched this private chat, customers have reported 90-100% satisfaction and resolution.
Barclaycard Community: https://community.barclaycardus.com/
Lithy 2013 (Best Social Marketing Program): https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/lithys-social-customer/Lithys-2013-Barclaycard-Best-Social-Marketing-Program/idi-p/74706
Lithy 2013 (Best Community Design): https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/lithys-social-customer/Lithys-2013-Barclaycard-Best-Community-Design/idi-p/74660
Lithy 2013 (Best Business ROI):https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/lithys-social-customer/Lithys-2013-Barclaycard-Best-Business-ROI/idi-p/75846
Goals:
Improve customer experience by leveraging the community for digital servicing
Increase loyalty and usage of the card
Create content and build relationships to positively impact the financial literacy of the community
The primary focus of communications is centered on the engagement of the Barclaycard Ring community and is supported by a content creation strategy designed to build relationships with the card members.
Value:
Through their social media marketing initiatives, Barclaycard Ring has been able to improve their card member experience, provide a new platform for servicing their customers, and has built new advocacy programs and increased brand loyalty.
Barclaycard Ring provides multi-channel access for to this unique content through its Facebook page, Twitter channel, Google + page, YouTube channel as well as email marketing messages.
Through their social media marketing initiatives, Barclaycard Ring has been able to improve their card member experience, provide a new platform for servicing their customers, and has built new advocacy programs and increased brand loyalty.
$500k generated in revenue in the first 10 months of the community
Barclaycard Ring contributed to $10m in annual benefit
Customer retention improved by 25%
Customer complaints decreased by 50%
Design Objectives:
Legal and Privacy Considerations
Take advantage of servicing stickiness
Focus on seamless and intuitive customer experience as well as design
2012 Groundswell submission: http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Lithium-View-blog/Ring-Barclaycard-Turns-Cardmembers-into-Company-Stakeholders-and/ba-p/59070
2012 Forrester VoC award winner: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120626006756/en/Forrester-Research-Announces-2012-Voice-Customer-Award
How It Works
The mechanism that brings Ring cardmembers together and empowers them to influence business decisions is the social hub at barclaycardring.com. The Ring site is endowed with branded social tools such as:
- gamification – points are earned for helping others with useful information, and badges are awarded for taking positive actions such as paying on time and going paperless
- ideas – members submit ideas in a structured format that includes prioritization based on member voting, and status updates on what action Barclaycard is taking with an idea
- ask-and-answer – members ask a variety of financial questions and receive useful answers from peers in minutes
discussions – members discuss timely personal finance topics, and award each other kudos for interesting insights
- polls – members answer multiple-choice questions on card features such as fee structure and agreement terms, which, rather than merely being used as additional feedback, are considered to be votes in a final decision to shape these features
- blogs and announcements – Barclaycard community managers and high-status members keep members up to date with the latest happenings in the community, including descriptions of how Barclaycard is taking action on members’ ideas and feedback
Think of the Customer Experience as a Win-Win.
Lithium’s vision is to build trust between brands and people
We help brands connect, engage and understand their community
Our products help them to
Respond to customers through social channels at scale,
Engage through branded communities
And understand who their influencers are to build advocacy for their brand.