Customer Care = An Unmatchable Customer Experience

Establishing a customer care team that is proactive leads to an unmatchable customer experience. Here are a few examples of what we mean when we say ‘proactive customer care’:

• Conversational engagement with your audience. This can be via UGC (user-generated content) or simple tags and mentions. When someone takes the time to tag or mention your business, you should 100% engage with them. This will not only retain your current customers but bring new ones in as well.
• Applying social listening. Social listening helps businesses be proactive with their social intelligence by uncovering what their customers are saying about them. We can determine the sentiments (positive, negative, neutral) of a business’s audience and apply that to the marketing of future campaigns.
• Show some transparency. Finally, part of a great proactive customer care strategy is to be upfront about mistakes. In 2018, KFC ran out of chicken in the UK. They turned this potential avalanche of customer anger into a clever jab at themselves. KFC got ahead of the issue and took out a full-page ad and changed its logo (as seen below). Instead of the anger from hangry customers, they earned praise for their honesty and creativeness.

[Source: NY Post]

As you can see, it’s important to have a customer care team to help keep your customer experience at the highest level. A skilled customer care team is proactive and their role is all-encompassing to equal an unmatchable customer experience.

Customer Care + Customer Service

We would be remiss if we didn’t explain how customer service differs from customer care. In particular, customer service is reactive.

As an example, if a customer receives a bad product, they will complain. If they are unable to speak with a customer service representative, they will then take to social media. More and more, we are seeing that the future of customer service lives on social media and that response times are more important than ever.

Here’s how having a customer care team strengthens your customer service:

• IF a customer takes to social media to voice a very public complaint. THEN the customer care team does the following: acknowledges the customer, apologizes for the issue, offers solutions to assist.
• IF a returning customer returns to social media to complain. THEN the customer care team will do the following: apologize and acknowledge they are once again having an issue, offer assistance.

The goal is to help with their issue just as much as it is to keep them as a customer. In turn, they will trust your business and recommend it to others. Since nearly 80% of customer interactions are online, it’s in your best interest to be prepared and react in a timely manner.

One of the key factors going forward is examining how Millennials and Gen Z become valued customers. Sprout Social’s report findings (indicated below) further prove that social media coupled with trusted recommendations are where their customer purchasing power lies.

[Source: Sprout Social]

As you can see, customer care falls beyond customer service. Yes, customer service is very important, but customer care extends that relationship. This is where loyalty is built.

Customer Care Skills Are Unmatched

Customer care skills should run the gamut. To build a successful customer care team, you need to have individuals that possess these skills:

• Social media experience should go without saying. But, now we’ve said it. It’s important to know the ins and outs of social media platforms so mistakes are not made.
• Top-notch research and problem-solving skills. If a customer care team member (a community manager) is on a client’s account, they are speaking as the brand. They need to be quick to research documents to help solve problems in real-time.
• Ability to communicate as the brand. Customer care members are an extension of the brand. Team members need to effectively take on the tone and verbiage that represents each of their clients and then switch back and forth between brand accounts accordingly.
• Be incredibly patient. Not only is this a virtue, but it’s also a necessity. A customer care team should be able to patiently hear out a complaint and turn it into a learning experience for the team and brand.
• Logical thinking. Effective customer care teams are engaging and growing the online community. They are more than problem-solvers for customer issues. They are able to see what can be used as UGC for a brand, recognize repeat customers who leave comments, and nurture the relationship of the brand + its customers.

It’s important to note: A huge benefit to being part of an online customer care team is that you are not face-to-face with a customer. There is TIME. You can read, analyze, and put some valued thought into a response. Take that moment to breathe before replying to fired-up customers.

This is the way to build the bridge that joins customer care and customer service to deliver an unmatchable customer experience.

An Unmatchable Customer Experience