Chapter 12 Flashcards
With the wide acceptance of social media as a way for people to communicate and share information, companies now have to deal with a new phenomenon—
customer feedback on social media.
Customer feedback on social media can come in many forms. For example:
Reviews (e.g., hotel reviews on Tripadvisor.com)
Comments (e.g., posts by customers on a brand’s Facebook page)
Questions and requests (e.g., tweets asking a brand-related question or making a product-related request)
Irrespective of the type of customer feedback on social media, the challenge for companies lies in
deciding whether they should respond and, if so, how.
Whether you respond or let the customer feedback go unaddressed, you must have a good reason for doing either. This reason needs to come from an understanding of
the consequences of the action (or inaction), as well as a comparison of the benefits versus costs of the action (or inaction).
Considering the costs is important, because if you ignore this aspect, replying to every review, tweet, post, and comment might seem like a good way to nurture good customer relations. However, doing so often requires
a certain allocation of internal resources that might be better spent on other tasks.
even though many social media dashboards can help monitor social media channels for customer support purposes (e.g., Simply Measured, Hootsuite), responding still requires
human effort that needs to be thought through before being allocated.
As a general rule, we recommend that companies at least
monitor the feedback they are receiving on various social media platforms, including review websites and, where appropriate, retailer websites (e.g., for products on Amazon). Completely ignoring customer feedback is pointless
After monitoring, managers have to decide if
they want to take a more active approach by responding to customer feedback on social media.
After monitoring, managers need to consider the following aspects if they choose to respond to feedback:
What types of feedback (comments, reviews, questions, requests, etc.) should they respond to? Why?
What types of responses should they provide? For instance, should the brand simply acknowledge the feedback with a boilerplate response, or should responses be more customized and offer, for example, detailed answers to specific questions? Why?
Who will identify the feedback in the first place? That is, who is responsible for monitoring the social media channels? Who will then respond—the same team or a different one? If different, what internal policies must be established to ensure the right people inside the company are involved?
Which types of feedback should managers always ignore (e.g., profanity, offensive comments, etc.)?
when deciding whether, how, when, and why to respond, marketers should consider how these decisions—and the related action (or inaction)—will affect
key marketing metrics of interest, such as customer retention.
The reason is straightforward: responding to customer feedback on social media should be seen as an opportunity to contribute toward the company’s marketing objectives and generate value.
Responding to customers through social media is another opportunity to directly communicate with customers—
another “touchpoint” in the customer journey—and this means another opportunity to create and nurture a positive, valuable relationship.
The public nature of social media differentiates this customer-contact opportunity from other, more traditional ones. It also ups the ante for companies, because
any mistakes they make in addressing customer feedback on social media can, of course, be easily seen, shared, and—in the worst cases—go viral.
