Welcome to the Monthly Mash, a mashup of tools, tales and tips on customer service and the customer experience from around the blogosphere.
Volume 15: January 2013
Customer Experience Resource: Social Monitoring Tools
In our guest post last week, Who Won the Great Social Customer Service Race? we saw how major brands like Coca-Cola and Bank of America responded to customer engagement on Twitter. The experiment, while showing how different companies reacted to social interaction, also demonstrated how important it is for companies of all size to be monitoring their social media channels.
Social monitoring tools are not hard to find. It seems like a new competitor jumps into the space every week. Social monitoring ranges from free personal tools like Hootsuite (which does have a paid version) to premium services like Radian6 used by large companies like the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
What can social monitoring do for you and your organization?
Do you want to know when your customers are talking abut you and what they are saying? Do you want the ability to respond quickly to customer service issues? Do you want the ability to interact with potential customers before they turn to a competitor?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you have to have a conversation with customers and potential customers. To have that conversation, you have to hear who is trying to speak with you.
Of course, the challenge today is that your customers are speaking to you via multiple channels. Is it a phone call? An angry tweet? A laudable Facebook post? A satiric YouTube video? Social monitoring tools allow you to keep track of these conversations and to respond to them.
Social media monitoring is no longer optional. Make sure to investigate the many social monitoring tools available on the market –and then, simply, begin listening.
The Month in Customer Service Blogging:
A collection of the best posts about customer service and the customer experience I read this past month.
- 5 Customer Service Lessons From Winnie-the-Pooh – This will make you smile, and realize that there is more to the customer experience than the transaction.
- Is Loyalty Still Dead? — An interesting look at the concept of customer loyalty in the age of social media and low switching costs.
- A Key Attribute of a Customer Experience Professional – Of all the traits a customer facing professional can have, this one is the most cohesive and important trait you want your employees to possess.
- Loyalty Cannot Be Purchased – In the recent lockout, the NHL took its eyes off its customers, the fans, and to its detriment.
- Red Robin Employees Embrace Company Culture Through Kindness – This restaurant has a surprising feature on their website that would motivate any service-based company.
- The Great Social Customer Service Race: Top Brands Compete in a Social Response Test – We featured this topic at CTS as a guest post this month by Ashley Verrill, but we just loved the concept that we wanted to highlight it again.
- 6 Things Every Customer Wants – Great tips for companies providing B2B services.
- Don’t Hide From Customer Complaints, Negative Online Reviews or Feedback – Similar to physical customer service, it is always better to address negative feedback or issues than to ignore them.
- 4 Steps to Cultivate Insane Customer Loyalty – The title really speaks for itself, and these principles can be tweaked to fit any company’s marketing model.
- How the Net Promoter Score Helps You Benchmark Customer Loyalty [INFOGRAPHIC] – A clear and well-presented infographic on the definition of NPS and how some companies use it.
- Small Orgs and Big Data? Affordable Solutions Exist for Four Key Problem Areas – Advice on where smaller businesses can get the most out of a big data investment.
- What Your Customers Would Love to Tell You – This rare opportunity is one that most companies probably did not have when they started.
Someone Was Listening:
Sometimes the most popular post from the previous month; sometimes just the one I liked best.
We were very excited to introduce the concept of Hero-Class Customer ServiceTM this past month. In What is Hero-Class Customer Service? Part 1 and What is Hero-Class Customer Service? Part 2, we introduced a specific way of viewing organizations who consistently deliver exceptional customer service and an amazing customer experience. We drew strengths from the Superheroes we all know know to help us define the traits that a Customer Service Hero has.
Adam Toporek
Latest posts by Adam Toporek (see all)
- Social Media Is a Channel Not a Strategy - May 6, 2013
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Hello Adam,
How are you today? Great sharing of awesome tools. You share about the hootsuite and I am using it for sharing the stuff. These tools help us in monitoring the activities. I think hootsuite is best as compared to other alternatives. What do you think Adam. Do reply.
Thanks for sharing
Praveen Soni recently posted..Samsung Announces yet another Smartphone-Samsung Galaxy Young
Hi Praveen, Hootsuite is my main app; however, I like Tweetbot as well on iPad. Thanks,
Thanks for the reply Adam
Praveen Soni recently posted..Samsung Announces yet another Smartphone-Samsung Galaxy Young