Social Media B2B

Many B2B companies understand the idea of the sales funnel and track their leads using a CRM system like Salesforce.com or a module integrated into their ERP system, but they are not using the same organized process to handle customer service. According to a May 2009 study, only 40% of companies stated that their employees have the tools to handle customer service. With the explosion of the use of social media for customer service in 2009, the landscape for B2B customer service has become more complicated, and needs structure that can account for a variety of incoming inquiries.

The original sales funnel features four segments as customers move through the funnel: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. While not a perfect model for the sales process, it made some sense, and has even be updated to the more practical segments of Leads, Visitors, Prospect, Customer. We can apply a similar model to the customer service process, except as potential customers more through the sales funnel, their numbers are reduced through qualification of one type or another. The customer service funnel metaphor is not about reducing the numbers, but about making sure all parts of a potentially disparate process wind up in the same place.

Incident
A business customer using your product or service discovers a problem, or a potential customer doing their research before a purchase has a question about it. Before the advent of social media channels and the acceptance of tweeting a problem, sometimes out of frustration, a customer would write a letter or call a customer service phone number. The toll-free phone call, or a call to an account manager, is still the most likely customer action to address a problem or ask a question, however, many customers are announcing these online. This may be addition to contacting the company, but sometimes the online request is the only option chosen.

Awareness
Your company may have dedicated resources to creating an inbound call center to handle both sales leads and customer service calls. If you company is smaller, or your customers have relationships with their account manager, the calls flow in that direction, never making it to the call center. And who in your organization is managing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or industry online forums and monitoring social web mentions? Maybe marketing, communications, or even an outside firm.

The most important part of the process happens right here. You have to have a central tracking repository that links these events to the customer and no matter where the awareness happens, it needs to be entered into this system. While a CRM system is ideal for tracking these sort of cases, not all members of your social media team have access, and small companies may not be able to invest in these levels of solutions. At a minimum, enter the incident into customer notes in your database with a list of next steps and who is responsible for those steps.

Acknowledgment
In traditional customer service communications, there is no need for acknowledgment. There is no need to discuss written letters anymore for B2B customer service, and the acknowledgment of a phone call is to receive the information from the customer and respond with an answer or a time frame to respond with the answer. But on the social web where someone tosses a complaint or question out, the acknowledgment serves two purposes. The first is to let the customer know your company heard the cry for help. These tweets in the night are becoming more common. The second reason is so other people see your company has responded. Even if the response is requesting the customer follow you back so you send them a direct message, the public response is an important part of the process.

Resolution
The goal of any customer service program is to resolve customer issues, while not expending too many resources in the process. Many call center operations focus on reduction in call times rather than customer satisfaction. The public nature of customer service on the social web changes the nature of the customer relationship. A full resolution of customer issues needs to move higher up in the customer service process. The reach of an unhappy customer is now greater than ever. Some of these customer interactions become more costly as marketing staff and account managers get involved, so a clearly defined process and system for handing these back to customer service is important, as cost tracking is still relevant. After resolution of these issues where social media played a role, keep a record of successes for future presentation to management of the benefits of social media.

What are some changes you have seen in customer service not that social media opens up the company to public issues.

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