Ian
Are you one of those sites who open a
chat window when a prospective shopper lands on your site? Do you
save cookies from your shopper’s movements within the site?
Find opportunities
Help customers as much as you can. You
will be rewarded. But remember that there’s a fine line between
helpful and creepy. So, don’t overdo brand engagement. Have a
Twitter account to address issues raised online. So, if a user tweets
that he has had a bad experience with your product, get a customer
service representative address the issue and make the user understand
that he is being attended to.
Engage customers online and
offline
By all means, be active on social
media. It matters a lot. But try to balance what’s seen by all of a
person’s friends and followers with one-to-one interaction. If
someone complains about your product on Twitter, respond to him
publicly so that others who see the complainant’s claim also see
your response. They understand that the organization cares enough.
This serves another purpose. Other
users of your product facing similar issues know that they can find
help.
Provide specialized training.
Encourage all your employees to be
brand ambassadors on social networks. If it’s a small organisation,
ask your employees to share news about your development on their
social media accounts. Ask them to engage in conversation about these
threads. But before they do all that, it’s important to train them
on what to say and what not to say on social media. What goes on the
internet stays there forever. And when sticky issues come up,
specific employees trained to handle these issues must handle them.
Do not under estimate the
influence of users
If people have an
issue with your product, you need to address it. But pay extra
attention to people with wide influence. If you sell kitchen
products, you need to make sure chefs and home cooks, food bloggers
of repute and other such star users are not dissing your product. If
they tweet something about your product, address the issue at once.
Top priority! A bank prioritises its top investors over everyone
else. Work similarly. Typically, influencers have great franchise
and can make or break products with their blogs, social media
accounts and such.
Take advantage of data.
Engaging, interacting and dealing with
customers generates a lot of data. Big Data. And this is extremely
important. Analysis of this data gives you a fair idea of what
frequent problems arise when customers sue your products. Try to
avoid these problems. Start with the production arena and see if your
future products can overcome issues. Oft repeated mistakes from the
customer side should be given a lot of focus. Encourage customers to
give feedback. It helps you in the long run.
