A Rant On Social Support: If You Are Doing This - Stop!

  I am going to make this a brief one today.  Just venting really.  In my very first blog post on Multi-Channel CX (see it here) I talked about how companies can leverage multi-channel CX as a kind of force-multiplier; especially important if you are an underdog in your market and do not have deep pockets for a large contact center or a loyal user base willing to do half the work for you (crowd sourcing).

 Without naming names I would like to talk about one company that is violating the first rule of CX:  Do Not Make It Difficult For Your Customers To Get Support!

  Making it difficult to find your phone number is a bad practice.  Do not do it.  Sure if you have a phone number people will call you and that costs money.  You know what is worse?  When no one is calling you!  And that is the exact situation you will find yourself in if you force your customers down a prescribed support path not of their choosing - especially when that support path is ill-suited for their contact type.

  Take, for example, a technical trouble shooting call.  This kind of call is a dynamic human-to-human interaction with intense two-way communication.  "Please power the device off and back on.  Did you do it?  Great!  On to step two" etc. It should come as no surprise that this interaction would be best handled on a telephone call (I am excluding software support from this example where there is a well-established mode of handling technical support via email).  Forcing a customer to do this kind of trouble-shooting over chat is less than ideal.  Some may choose to take this path but it should not be your only available channel.  Making this your only option is also a bad practice.

  Why then would this company offer support (including technical troubleshooting) over Twitter where character limitations make for an even more disjointed customer experience?  Perhaps I am showing my age but when I use Twitter I do not expect rapid responses - at least not fast enough to handle a troubleshooting interaction.  I have observed the absolute worst use of social media for technical support with an average response time of 4 DAYS per tweet!  What should have been a 10 minute call has dragged on for more than 3 weeks.  Needless to say I have given up on this product and moved to a competitor.  This support experience tells me everything I need to know about where this company is focused - and it's not on the customer.

  In my earlier blog post I talked briefly about the Enterprise-as-Contact-Center concept which is a fantastic idea for the right companies.  This concept works well with the Social Channel as long as the requests are not as time sensitive as technical support.  By allowing your best and brightest to check-in to social queues one or two hours per day to share their energy and passion with your customers your company could truly differentiate themselves.  But using Twitter to deflect calls from a grossly understaffed support group is a recipe for disaster, lost customers, and lost revenue.