Some good and bad examples of social customer service

1. Social Customer Service: The Good,
the Bad and the Ugly

2. Agenda
• The document will cover some best practices for customer service in social channels and
highlight some good and bad examples of it
• The best practices will cover:
• Organisation
• A team approach
• Having hours of operation and emergency contacts
• Social FAQs
• Focused channels and expectations
• Centralising Customer Service
• Response
• Speed and openness
• Tone of voice, Empathy, and brand protection
• Be pro-active
• Personal touches
• Ignoring and deletion

3. Organisation

4. Team approach
o No one team should completely own social customer service so that there is knowledge on all brand
considerations. However you must be consistent in your answers & responses
o Set consumers expectations for feedback by setting working hours. However ensure you continue to monitor on
off-times in case something develops
Good example Bad example
During 2009, the snow crippled the transport system closing During Christmas 2009, the snow led to some serious disruptions on
Gatwick. Without floor staff knowing anything, people turned to the Eurostar service, with passengers being stranded on the trains for
Twitter. EasyJet responded within minutes to people 24 hours a hours without any information.
day advising them on the latest developments.
Why is it bad? Lack of information on the trains as well as Eurostar’s
Why is it good? Great example of crisis management in advance public relations team gave conflicting information on their social
and being pro-active in a critical situation reacting quickly and channels (Facebook/Twitter) about the incident. This led to a serious
stopping problems before they blow out of control online serious backlash from consumers
YouTube
apology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jx
5EdCEgT4&feature=player_embedded

5. Team approach
Good example
KLM – Ash Cloud; again another great example of
crisis management during a critical situation

6. Having hours of operation and
emergency contacts
o As highlighted in the previous EasyJet example, in certain cases, your customers may need you out of hours
o In case of a crisis (e.g. Kingsthorpe incident), Customer Service may be require to work out of hours to deal with
the issue
o During holidays (e.g. Christmas), basic monitoring of social properties (Facebook/Twitter) is advised to ensure
no serious issues arise
National Rail East Coast were responding
to customers at 1.40 am!

7. Social FAQs
o Provide links to or collate your social frequently asked questions so that constant questioning topics can be pre-
answered (just as you would do on site).
Good example
Best Buy run the Twitter handle @twelpforce as well as an external
website (bbyconnect.appspot.com) which gathers Tweets (also from Best
Buy employees), feeds and the Best Buy blog.
Why is it good? The Twelpforce almost works like a dynamic FAQ,
updating and changing as fast as technology can move, and hosts itself on
bbyfeed.com so people can search for previous Q&As

8. Focussed Channels - Orange Helpers
• Regardless of what you try to do, people will use whatever site they are most active on to ask questions. In order to manage
expectations and conversations, it is key to define the channels for the users so they know where and how they should interact
• Orange have created a sub-brand for their customer service which lives across all social properties. Although linked to from their
main Orange UK accounts, it has its own Facebook and Twitter homes so lives independently. It has two employees specifically
dedicated to customer care so consumers get an answer quickly and see the human face of the brand.
• Why is it good? Clearly defined proposition and following
• BUT the main OrangeUK pages still gets many customer service queries into their branded channels which doubles the work and
potentially irritates the consumer.

9. Centralising social customer
• Thomas Cook both have a Support tab (powered by Get Satisfaction) which allows users to submit ideas,
service
problems, praise or questions that the customer service team respond to; it is separate from the wall, and is
completely managed within the app
Good example
Why is it a good idea? The app enables their wall to be used for more
branded communications and allows them to make a further
connection with consumers
Without having to leave Facebook customers can search questions, ask
questions and report problems - as well as the all important ‘give
praise’ option, highlighting the level of customer care.

10. Response

11. o
Response speed and openness
In Social Media, speed is key as customers expect you to respond quickly, and issues can quickly escalate. Lack of
responsiveness and clarity could lead to an online backlash
Good example Bad example
In July 2001, a number of East Coast trains got stuck for a few hours United broke David Carroll's guitar in transit, and made little effort
because of an accident which caused major delays. People were to compensate him. So David Carroll posted a video on YouTube
tweeting from trains and stations and @NRE_EastCoast promptly singing about the incident which went viral.
replied to every single Tweet
The Times newspaper reported that 4 days after the video’s release,
Why is it good? East Coast trains were responding to customers United's stock price dropped 10%, costing stockholders over $180m
until 2AM in the morning in a friendly and efficient manner in value. Today the video is a smash hit and has over 10m views.
Customer service fail.
Key Leanings: Respond to customer complaints, quickly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

12. Tone of voice, empathy and brand
o protection
Social Media gives you an opportunity to give your brand personality and a distinctive
o Listen and engage with your customers, take part in online conversations around trending topics!
Good example
Ben and Jerry’s and Innocent smoothies both have a very
friendly and witty tone of voice on Twitter. They frequently
engage with their followers, and their followers love them
for it!
Why is it good? Social Channels are about connecting with
people, not marketing speak

13. Tone of voice, empathy and brand
Bad examples
protection
Qantas was running a hashtag based on a giveaway promotion Kenneth Cole jumped in boiling water when they tried to hijack the
during a time where passengers were stranded around the world #Cairo tag associated with the Egyptian Riots.
because a strike, leading to some massive complaints on Twitter
instead Lesson: Brands, hash tag hijacking is always a bad idea (see Chris Lake
Why is it bad? The promotion timing of the promotion was poor blog post), especially if it has nothing to do with your product. Be
and a blatant attempt to cover up something bad (or previously careful what you comment on.
planned and not cancelled)

14. Be pro-active
o Social Media allows brands to communicate with their customers like never before, and can be used in
innovative ways as a customer service tool , and to add value to customers
Good example
Litt’s Plumbing post Twitpics for their customers when
they are installing their machines with actual project
updates such as “New dishwasher installed”, “New
counters down” and “Installing the backsplash now” so
their customers can see the progress whilst they are at
work.
Why is it good? This approach adds value, and can
reinforce customer loyalty and positive word of mouth

15. Have a personal touch: Team descriptions
o When contacting Customer Service over the phone, the representative will always introduce
himself/herself; the same can be done online
Team example Individual accounts
By including pictures of their team and identifying Larger brands with high volumes of queries, even have
themselves with a ^ (co-tag) and the team member’s initial individual accounts solely dedicated to customer service
Vodafone personalize the experience for customers (see next slide for full AT&T case study)

16. AT & T – Where PR Becomes Customer
Care
The problem:
• On a normal day there are over 10,000 mentions of AT&T on social networks
• Almost every day during the first 6 months of 2009 “#attfail” and “#AT&Tsucks” trended
regularly on Twitter
The solution:
• AT&T staffed up its social-media customer-care corps, starting with 5 people dedicated solely to
responding to customer dissatisfaction of Twitter and YouTube this has now grown to encompass
Facebook and consists of 19 people
• To date, 32,000 customer service tickets come through social per month
• AT&T flags its social media customer care on its bills, websites and other customer channels to
make consumers aware that they can turn to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook with problems

17. Have a personal touch: Responses
o Social Media is about creating relationships and talking with your customers. Personal touches can
help create an emotional bond with the brand
Good example Bad example
Red Bull engages with Twitter community, responding to The response is personable and doesn’t showcase personality of the
Tweets in an informal and conversational way, proactively brand as expressed through other marketing channels such as viral
reaching out to people mentioning the brand ads, TV ads, print & general brand perception
Why is it good? They reach out proactively to their fans, Why is it bad? It looks like customer service was made responsible for
and add personality to their brand this channel with no social or marketing guidance provided

18. Not just the bad, rewarding the good
• Social Media is also about engaging with yours fans. If they something nice about you,
acknowledge them with a like or a comment
Good example
Société Perrier make their fans feel Welcome by
engaging with them whilst still pushing content
in a relevant way

19. Do not delete or ignore posts!
o The number one rule in Social Media, is to accept all comments, both good and bad
o There is a natural fear of negative comments, however do not ignore them; try to respond in the best possible
way until the issue is resolved
Good example
Michael Arrington, Editor in Chief at TechCrunch (12,000
tech savvy followers) was experiencing extremely bad
service with his Comcast Internet connection, and
customer service were not much of a help
Michael Tweeted Comcast, and within 20 minutes had
received a call from Customer Service who dealt with the
issue
What is it good? Customer service were listening, and
turned what could have been a PR disaster, into a PR
opportunity (i.e. Michael Arrington ISP is Comcast)

20. Do not delete or ignore posts!
Bad example
People learned from the news websites (rather
than directly from the ticket provider) that the
Ignition Festival was cancelled.
Although they were previously active on Twitter
and Facebook, during the time of crisis they just
disappeared, ignoring tweets and posts from
disappointed customers.
They Tweeted once to apologise and then deleted
their social media accounts altogether.
This, of course, resulted in angry blog posts and
Facebook groups – I don’t think they will run the
festival under the same name in the future!

21. And finally, don’t panic!
• If something goes wrong, stick to the honest, open and personal principles in your response
The Red Cross's social media specialist sent a personal
tweet by mistake from the company account.
The Red Cross did a great job of owning up to the mistake,
and even poked fun out of themselves in a later tweet.
This was done promptly, transparently and wittily.
The result was not only a recovering a situation, but also
coming out of it positively and increasing their donations.