social customer care: you're doing it wrong!

In preparation for a customer meeting around social customer care, I am browsing through Twitter and Facebook looking for customer care requests: I can see a lot of variations of #badcx, so I thought it'd be interesting to put together a list of what NOT to do when your customers are complaining or asking help publicly via social media:

1. If the rant is specific to a common issue that many other are experiencing, you don't want to just respond but to show everyone how to fix the problem so that the same experience can be shared among peer customers.
2. When a user is ranting about something that went bad with your company or product, this means that they probably already tried to contact you via phone or email and typically this is their last resort. So the ideal answer cannot be "please contact us at 800...". The response should be immediate and in-channel. If personal information are involved, publicly switch to DM or Messenger and then try and contact the customer directly.
3. If there is a help request that can be solved by providing technical or product information, by all means provide those info publicly! Not only the requester will be happy as cake, but the love will spread to other users that are maybe searching for the same info on your very website!
4. When you are a large global company, sometimes issues can only be resolved at field level. This does not mean you can't include them in the public social conversation! At minimum, you should show the customer that you have passed on the information, and they will be contacted by the local branch. Responding to go to the local store...well...reads just #badcx.
5. Again, even if you are a large corporation with lots of department and employees, if a customer resorted to public shaming you, responding that you are "just the social media team" does not help improving the perception of your company. Consumers don't care about your internal organization: if the social media team has your official brand, then it is the company front page as your contact centre is the front door voice.
6. If a user is so frustrated that they posted the same comment on your timeline over and over again, it's not enough just to respond to one: every single message is potentially dangerous and searchable, and must be addressed with care. Wouldn't it be the same if they took the time to make 10 complain calls at your contact centre? Or would you drop the line at the second call because you already answered?
7. And last but not least...the language. If you are a global corporation in 20 countries it might be assumed you also support the local language of your operations. Responding to a public tweet or post in a different language is not considered polite, unless you offer an explanation and at least a tentative translation with any of the commonly offered free on-line tools. Also, there are lots of translators out there, in case of lack of skilled resources.

My overall impression is that you can immediately spot when social marketing teams are responding to customer care inquiries: the language is perfect and polished, the responses look pre-approved and are always politically correct, but the results?

Companies need to start providing decent social customer care, and they can make this decision easily by just browsing their own pages and accounts today.