FIGURE 9-4: A flow chart for setting up feedback loops.
Say that a customer raises a concern that directly or indirectly involves your company, products, or services and posts on Twitter, for all the world to see. In the age of social media and digital communication, this is a common occurrence. That’ s why the first line of defense in the feedback loop is your community manager, the person at your company who monitors the conversations happening on the social web. Your company might use a paid tool like Mention or Radian6, described earlier, to listen for these complaints as they happen. You might have multiple community managers, or you might be the community manager. In any case, someone must be listening to the social web when your customer voices the issue.
Sometimes issues simply can’ t be resolved immediately, and that’ s okay. Just letting customers know that their message has been received is enough to make them feel respected and appreciated, and will buy you some time to find the resolution. Imagine being a waiter at a busy restaurant during happy hour and an unexpected table of ten walks into your section. At the moment, you don’ t have time to take this table’ s order or even drop off water. What can you do to buy yourself some time? You stop by the table, verbally acknowledge your customers’ arrival, and inform them that you will be with them shortly.
We call this the“ You’ ve Been Heard” response, and it’ s a powerful way to de-escalate situations— both for busy restaurants and on the social web. The social media universe moves lightning fast. Twenty-four hours might as well be a thousand years, especially when unhappy customers are involved. That’ s why having someone in your company who is listening to what’ s being said and responding to issues quickly is crucial. We try to respond within 12 hours to Facebook messages and even quicker on Twitter, a channel with even less patience. This first-response time depends on the size of your company, so it’ s important to sit down and think about how quickly your organization can respond and what your feedback-loop time frame looks like— just be sure that customer service issues