Customer Service

Tag Archive: Customer Service

The ZizZazz incident

Written on September 2, 2009 by Josh Peters in Social Media, twitter

ZizZazz is a maker of powdered energy supplements that come in a little pouch and you then add them to water or other beverages and help give it a bit more of an energy kick. So what does this have to do Social Media, Internet Marketing and Online Life? Everything.

I haven’t talked about my use of Tumblr or Posterouson here yet (planned post) but I have been testing them both out to determine which I like most and for what reasons. Currently I’m liking Tumblr more than I am Posterous and on my Tumblr page I have been running something called The Great Energy Shot Experiment and am at day 15.

In this little experiment of mine I have been posting up the Nutritional Information of each energy shot I have taken for a comparison and today I absentmindedly threw away the package for my ZizZazz before cateloging the nutrition info, and I talked about that in my post The Great Energy Shot Experiment: Day 15 – ZizZazz.

Within about 20 minutes of sending it out via Twitter I received this tweet from the ZizZazz Twitter account

That’s great! It was absolutely awesome to see that they are obviously listening for mentions of their brand and then following up with it.

I already mentioned in the post that I enjoyed their product (especially when compared to some of the others I’ve had during the experiment), and this was a great little bonus to the experience of their product.

So now here’s the big question. How will that play into my loyalty to the brand?

I don’t like to take these types of things, and have noticed a marked change in my body chemistry and overall self since starting on this journey so I won’t be reaching for any of this stuff on a daily basis ever again. However I will say that being able to talk directly with someone should I have a problem or concern with the product does in fact sway my decision a bit.

Should I hate one of the flavors I can now complain directly to @ZizZazz via Twitter and while they may not be able to do anything about that other than send me a different flavor or coupon for a free one at least I, the consumer, will feel better about my opinion being heard.

I’d like to thank ZizZazz for responding and being willing to help with my situation, and I applaud them for listening to what people are saying.

Have you had a similar experience? Received more than you expected from a brand while using social technologies? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Thanks for reading,
Josh

Tags: Customer Service, Social Media, twitter, ZizZazz

Want a powerful tech support team? Just add social media!

Written on January 8, 2009 by Josh Peters in Social Media, Strategy

8 Comments - Leave a comment!

Image by Seattle Municipal Archives

Tech support is the perfect group to utilize Social Media. Maybe it’s my technical background speaking, but I truly believe that. Consider these points before you run down to the comments section to call me a liar.

They know your product inside and out.
They’re aware of the most common mistakes made by users.
Most technical support agents are smart problem solvers.
Most have customer service skills and know how to deal with difficult people.
They are already representing your brand with every call they take, so why not brand online customer interactions too?
More than likely the techs are going to be web savvy.
Chances are they already have profiles and are using social media in one form or another.

Everyday you have a group of people who are representing your company through their actions and your brand gets associated with their skills and the work they do.

That’s not to say they are infallible, even great techs have an off day or drop the ball from time to time and when that happens customers are increasingly moving to the web to complain to thousands of people. We’ve seen how quickly a bad experience can spread with the Motrin debacle, so why not empower your techs to do something about it?

It makes all the sense in the world to empower this group to help customers outside of the normal inbound call. Need some help getting started?

Setup your listening and reputation management tools.
After determining how active brand detractors are and where they are at, create a team.
- Team size depends on results from #2 plus 1-2 people for more proactive activities.
- After figuring out group size take your top agents that want to be a part of this and place them on the team.
Put the agents through any pertinent training on use, best practices, reaction strategies, etc.
Monitor their efforts and measure progress.
Use proactive techniques to help build the companies reputation for knowledge and service.
- Blogs and forums are an example of proactive resources.
Make sure to applaud their efforts and announce the teams existence on the corporate blog. Announcing the team’s existence through an official corporate channel lends credence to their activities.

Those are the 6 steps to getting started, but while planning and creating the team there are three things that should be kept in mind.

Be ready for changes, and plan for them ahead of time.
- This goes for everything from size of group needed to the methods and tactics utilized
This is a long haul commitment and requires some concept evolution.
If something doesn’t work, fails, or falls apart don’t worry. It can be documented, researched, and revisited later if necessary.

What do you think? Make sense? I’d love to get your opinion in the comments below.

Thank you for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters