Using Social Media to Research Customer Service Experiences

By Li Evans

Think that people don't care about conversations about the customer service experience your company provides?  Think again!

According to a recently released study from The Society for New Communications Research on Customer Care, a lot more people are using Social Media to investigate Customer Service experiences dealing with companies.  In the study 91% percent of the respondents said they used some sort of Social Media either "Always", "Often", "Sometimes", or "Rarely".  That's saying something, and companies should start taking heed.

Not only are more people utilizing social media when researching customer service experiences, they take it into great consideration, with only 3% of those respondents saying they never consider it.  So what's this saying?  It's saying, what people are doing in social media matters.  It doesn't matter a little, it matters a lot.  Do you know how well your customer service stacks up in social media circles?

Social Media is a wide area of types of sites.  So which types of sites are the most influential?  Sorry Facebook & MySpace, it seems you guys don't fair well at all, and forget about Digg & social news sites.  People look to Ratings & Review sites, Discussion Forums & Blogs the most.  The study did include Search Engines - but they aren't Social Media, however that was a top influencer.

This is a pretty interesting study.  Even though it only looks at customer service experience, it is interesting to me.  Great customer service is a natural place to start good social media and word of mouth marketing strategy.  This study just goes back to reinforcing that fact.

* Hattip to Toby Bloomberg (@TobyDiva) for the link to the study!

Comments

[David-tu-M]

Comming from a customer service background I 100% agree that social media can be the new yard stick for measuring customer service. Our social media site provides an oppurtunity for people to share their customer service experinece in the industry of financial aid.

Social Media is a great medium to see what your peers are saying about something you may be thinking of purchasing.

[Toby]

Li - Thanks for the shout out. In a world where people can find out anything about your company, brands, product/serices even employees at the speed of a click .. it amazes me why more companies are Not "going social." Customer service "conversations" would be a great way to begin to participate.