When it comes to social media and customer service, many are familiar with the stories from Zappos, Comcast and a few other high profile companies. I recently had an opportunity to speak with Drugstore.com’s Director of Customer Care Lisa Larson. With Drugstore.com being an online retailer since 1998, and Lisa being there from the beginning, their story has valuable perspectives and insights that companies looking to engage customers via social channels can learn a great deal from. Especially Lisa's thoughts on using social networks, not only to get a better understanding of your customers, but also to allow them to get a better understanding of who you are.
Below are a few highlights of the conversation around how social media is impacting customers, customer service, Drugstore.com as a company, and Lisa's role as director of customer care.
Brent Leary: How are social media tools helping you today?
Lisa Larson: They allow us to get out there. Right now, we are out there in social media, in two areas with marketing. That's drugstore.com and beauty.com. But we are also out there on Twitter within Customer Care; we have Beauty Advisor and Directors Desk. So we go out there and we talk to our customers and the social tools help us manage those contacts.
BL: Was that a big transitional change, being able to start communicating with customers, or have them communicate with you over social channels, as opposed to the more traditional channels?
LL: It was. It really was. It's different. You have to learn how to do it. You start out rough. I think most people probably do. Not many people are doing this yet. They are trying to learn how to talk to their customers. You are trying to learn if it should be personal or really professional. I think there are different areas. With our marketing and promotion, we have fun and customers get to know us as a store.
But when you are sitting down and you are talking to someone within our Customer Care, its personal. You are talking to me and I am there to solve your problems and you will get to know who I am, or you will get to know who the beauty advisor is, because we are there to serve you. Just like you walk into the corner store and you are talking to the person at the front desk, it's the same thing. That is what social media is, it's the communication and we think that's important. We want people to know us.
BL: So they can actually contact you on Twitter?
LL: They can contact me on Twitter. They can contact my team on Twitter and we'll be there to talk to them. We make sure that we actually use our escalation team or a team lead to talk back, because you cannot take things back. There is one shot. If you say the wrong thing or you create the wrong impression, it could be a bad brand experience and that's one thing we want to be cautious of. We are learning. We have put together processes. We are building on those and the guidelines on how to speak to our customers in this arena.
BL: Are your reps really interested with being able to serve the customers in all these different formats and actually meet the customer where they are now?
LL: Absolutely.
BL: So they are reaching out to them on Twitter? How is that impacting the way that they go about serving their customers?
LL: First of all, they love this. The team that's on Twitter, they are out there in public, that's really cool to a CSR, for them to be seen and get to know the customers. That's something that is important to them. For them, they see this as a win and its fun. CSRs like to do different things, they want to try new forums, they like to chat, they want to do email and phone. Social media is very different and new and for them to be a part of this program is very big and fun.
BL: Just to give us a sense, how many reps do you have?
LL: Overall we have over 150 CSRs, plus a management team.
BL: A certain number of them are interacting or all of them? What percentage of them are actually out there?
LL: Within social media, just a small percentage of my escalation team. I have got a team of ten right now that are trained and being trained. We look at every social media site, every two to four hours, depending on the time. We have a schedule. If there's an issue that is a Customer Care issue and they can quickly and easily respond to, they do.
If it's a situation where they are not sure how to handle, they actually bring it forward and we have a social media team that includes marketing, legal, myself and HR. There are some issues you want to be very cautious about.
BL: Does this social interaction translate to better relationships with your customers, now that they are getting a sense for knowing who you are? Does it make it a more valuable interaction between customers and agents?
LL: It does. They start caring for you. Sometimes when you are online, or just on the phone or email, people almost forget that you are human. When you put a face out there, or you put people out there and they get to know who you are, they treat you differently. Our goal is to serve them and to solve their problems, and do it well. I think I hear that and see it and know it. Social media is a big part of that. They can come and see who we are. We fix their problem, they see us not only fixing their problems, but fixing everyone else's. That means something to them. You do it well, honestly, and openly, and you are going to create relationships. They are going to like you for that. It’s when you don't do it that way or when you ignore them - or you don't resolve their problem – that is when they won't trust you.
That's a goal, to build trust because we want to fix every problem out there. We want to do it well. We want to do it right.
Brent Leary - Co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC
Brent Leary is a crm industry analyst, advisor, author, speaker and award winning blogger. He is co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta based CRM advisory firm covering tools and strategies for improving business relationships. In 2009 he co-authored Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business.
Recognized by InsideCRM as one of the 25 most influential industry leaders, Leary also is a past recipient of CRM Magazine's Most Influential Leader Award. He serves on the national board of the CRM Association, and on the advisory board of the University of Toronto's newly created CRM Center of Excellence. He's been quoted in several national business publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and Entrepreneur magazine. Leary writes the Social CRM column for Inc.com, and blogs at BrentLeary.com. You can reach him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BrentLeary.
Note: Brent Leary has been retained by Jacada to participate in the Customer Service 2.0: Access the Experts speakers series. The opinions shared herein reflect the views of the author, and not necessarily Jacada or its employees.