Tag: social media monitoring

Ramping Up Social Media Monitoring Support 4X for Promotional Campaigns

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Background

This company is an American prepaid wireless provider owned by a major telecom organization. They offer an array of products and services for mobile communications to millions of subscribers. These include smartphones, accessories, monthly plans, music, video, ringtones, directory assistance, and mobile applications. They were also one of the earliest companies to offer unlimited data plans to customers.

All products and services are marketed throughout the United States in brick-and-mortar stores along with a strong online presence via the company’s website, mobile app, and social media channels.

The Challenge

In April 2021, this prepaid wireless service provider significantly expanded its marketing and promotional campaigns for acquiring new customers, promoting upgrades, and rewarding their existing subscriber base. New programs included weekly rewards, perks, gear, and exclusive offers from partner brands for just being a customer. Promotions for redeeming “free stuff” were largely supported by their mobile app.

Anticipating a tremendous response to these new programs, the prepaid wireless provider was concerned about receiving an ongoing surge of inquiries and customer service requests primarily through their social media channels that included Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

To be proactive, they turned to iQor—their existing partner since 2004—for a quick and effective digital customer experience solution.

The Solution

Since the beginning of our partnership 17 years ago, iQor has effectively spearheaded customer and brand experience for this prepaid wireless provider. Starting in call centers and expanding 6 years ago into social media channels, iQor agents regularly respond to customer messages posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  

For years, iQor has provided exemplary social media monitoring service using 10 non-seasonal agents with specialized training. However, with new promotional programs being rolled out by the wireless provider, iQor believed the best solution to handle the anticipated spike in customer engagement and related tasks was to materially ramp up staffing.

400% Increase in Social Media Agents

A proposal to quickly ramp up by 4X from 10 to 40 agents was expeditiously approved. With the 400% increase in iQor agents, recruitment and training were fast-tracked while maintaining expected quality and productivity levels.

The iQor agent training program is structured to move experienced agents from the call center into social media monitoring. The training is provided over one week and focuses on new tools and applications along with enhancing grammar and writing skills to empower agents to be more impactful on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. New social media agents are thoroughly tested on these skills and the results are sent to the client for approval.

One of the critical applications that iQor agents working in social media monitoring for this client must be thoroughly versed in is SproutSocial, a social media platform that aggregates communications from all of the client’s platforms. It consolidates Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for a more efficient way of managing customer communications and agent responses from multiple channels.

Agents are also required to be proficient in Edge and Grand Central—both of which are in-house applications for checking customer account details and opening/tracking support tickets when needed.

Social media support is provided to customers 24/7/365. Many iQor agents are bilingual and handle Latino Facebook messages routinely as well.

Within a short time, iQor conducted thorough trainings and quickly ramped-up social media CX agents by 4X to meet the anticipated needs of the client and its new promotional programs.

Delivering Quality and Productivity at Scale

With an increase in social media agents of 400%, it was necessary to monitor the productivity and quality of the work now being delivered at scale. To do so, a 6-minute response time/service level agreement (SLA) with the wireless provider was introduced that corresponded with the ramp-up.

Prior to the ramp-up, when iQor was fully managing customer experience via social media with 10 agents, the response time to customer inquiries averaged 1-2 hours due to the then-current staffing level. Also, no SLA was in place between iQor and the client at that time.

To enhance the customer experience, agents must also be proficient in handling concurrent chats with customers on social media. They must also know when it is appropriate to “lock” client hotline tickets for situations where a technician needs to troubleshoot a persistent issue.

Before the ramp-up, there were no productivity targets designated by the client. With the new promotional campaigns, productivity targets were set at 20 tasks (customer interactions) per day. A task is defined as one separate interaction or completed item with a wireless customer.

The Results

The outcome from the ramp-up was a significant improvement to the overall customer service experience. iQor routinely met or exceeded all the client’s expectations for delivering quality and productivity since the 4X ramp-up went into effect.

Customer Response Time Improves Dramatically

As previously mentioned, prior to the 4X ramp-up, the response time for a customer inquiry on social media could take as long as 2 hours due to being short-staffed.

Once 40 iQor CX agents were up and running, the average monthly response time for the first six months (April 2021 through September 2021) was 5.3 minutes. This was well under the 6-minute response time required by the SLA, which represents a performance improvement of more than 22X.

There was one month (out of the six) where the SLA response time target was slightly missed. However, this was due to outages on social media platforms resulting in incoming messages from customers delivered late to the iQor agents.

Productivity Remains High

iQor agents complete up to an average of 4,000 tasks per week. The increase in the number of agents and wireless customer inquiries resulting from new promotions and marketing events has kept pace with one another.

Also, concurrent chat handling averages around 2 messages at a time per social media agent. While there is no strict cap in place, this has been the trend.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) Nearly Doubles

Wireless customers that engage on social media are increasingly happier with their provider. Recently, iQor began conducting net promoter score (NPS) surveys to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction. For the months of July 2021 through October 2021 NPS scores experienced a steady upward climb and have come close to doubling—from 34.42 to 62.14. The number of surveys answered per month also increased from 106 to 300—almost 300%.

Excellent Client Communication Continues

iQor continues to maintain top-notch communications with this wireless provider client throughout each month since the ramp-up. The client is very involved with the social media customer experience and is frequently updated on a weekly basis by iQor operations management. Discussions between iQor and the wireless provider frequently include:

  • Trends in social media
  • Specific feedback from wireless customers
  • Solutions for customer experience issues that may arise

In addition to these weekly meetings, iQor provides a report every 2 hours highlighting specific metrics, anomalies, or spikes in messages that may have taken place during that time on social media platforms.

iQor Agents Really Enjoy Social Media Monitoring

iQor agents and their managers are raving about results that have taken place since the ramp-up. The average span for an agent in social media is up to 2 years.

An experienced iQor manager expressed the new social media atmosphere well with the following statement:

I took over in April as the lead manager when we only had 10 agents. The customer asked me to increase our headcount by 30 agents to give us a total of 40 agents on the project. Since being placed on social media at iQor, I have thoroughly enjoyed working in this position. We are learning new systems and how to enhance our communication with customers. What makes the experience different is moving from taking calls to responding in writing on social media platforms. Overall, this has been a fun, challenging experience and I’m truly excited to be an integral part of it.

social media monitoring interactions

Social Media Monitoring & Response with Flexible Seasonal Staffing

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Background

This retailer is one of the leading online retailers in the United States and abroad with a recognized need for ramped-up seasonal staffing.

The company is known for delivering all sorts of high-quality gift offerings including chocolates, baked goods, gift baskets, and designer popcorn for major holidays and special occasions such as birthdays, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day.

Customers can order gifts through one of its many franchised and company-owned brick and mortar retail stores as well as many domestic and overseas affiliates, or online through its full-service eCommerce website.

The Challenge

Previously, the retailer relied mostly on voice interactions to take orders and provide an outstanding customer experience to fulfill gifting needs. With the roll-out of their eCommerce website, they continued to take orders online and soon found themselves experimenting in the social media space with Facebook to complete transactions.

Eventually, they realized that social media (SM) channels are much more than just a way to transact business, but also a digital communication medium that needed to be appropriately leveraged to deliver exceptional customer service and experience—just like they had done successfully with call centers throughout the years.

Customers expect a response to their complaints within 30 minutes to an hour.

Facebook

30 minutes

WhatsApp

1 hour

Twitter

30 minutes

Instagram

1 hour

LinkedIn

1 hour

Source: HubSpot

To engage with their digital community, the company initiated its very first customer experience program specifically targeted at social media platforms.

Looking to continue its digital customer experience solution, the organization decided to expand its work with iQor— our team that had been successfully providing customer experience support through call centers and email communications for the past six years.

The Solution

iQor took over the social media monitoring program in 2017, providing customer experience and support for the retailer’s three major social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They started with a small team and have since grown substantially to meet all critical business requirements, metrics, and standards. Since taking over, iQor has been continuously providing all social media monitoring and response functions for the retailer.

As part of the social media monitoring solution, iQor agents respond to all customer inquiries and complaints posted on the retailer’s three social media channels. These typically include, but are not limited to, billing queries, quality issues, and delayed or missing product complaints.

Social media messages for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are consolidated and assigned to iQor agents through a third-party social media and customer experience management platform.

Ramping to 750% with Ease

During the non-seasonal time of year, there are approximately 30 full-time iQor agents monitoring and managing these platforms with minimal involvement from the retailer itself. When peak business seasons occur—Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Christmas—there is a rapid ramp-up to 250+ agents to handle the increased volume of customer engagement in social media. The seasonal staffing ramp-up can easily approach 750% for Mother’s Day—the biggest holiday for the gift and floral industry.

A Stress-Free Peak Season

The retailer can turn on as many seats as needed with a few simple clicks with iQor’s cloud-based network, ready-to-go talent pool, and intuitive training.

From 30 agents to:

Peak season hiring for Christmas and New Year's
Peak season hiring for Valentine's Day
Peak season hiring for Mother's Day

To always ensure that ramp-up requirements are strictly met, iQor uses its cloud-based network, seasonal and full-time talent pool, and training at scale to fully extend across the non-peak seasonal periods (9 months out of the year). By partnering with iQor, the retailer has never fallen short of trained and capable agents ready to immediately respond to social media queries during peak seasons.

Agents are empowered and have access to all the tools required to solve any customer experience problem. iQor works independently and it is rare that it ever has to go back to the retailer for assistance in resolving a customer issue. On the rare occasions that it happens, agents reach out to the company by email. They are also authorized to directly contact delivery services and retailers to get information for customers.  

The Results

The retailer is experiencing phenomenal results. By using iQor’s social media monitoring agents, the retailer has routinely met or exceeded customer expectations and all requirements for handling social media channel responses and follow-up.

Agents Respond to Customers at Hyper-Speed

The service level agreement (SLA) requires that iQor agents meet a predetermined response time to customers within 8 minutes. This response time must be achieved 99.9% of the time. iQor agents, on average, respond within 3 to 5 minutes. Since the inception of the program, iQor has met this goal every month except for one month due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Every Customer is Answered

iQor’s social media monitoring teams have been consistently handling high levels of concurrent interaction with the retailer’s customers on social media channels. During peak seasons, agents can handle up to 6 or 7 messages and can process up to 1,000 cases per day. For non-peak seasons, concurrency rates are about 3 messages at a time as the retailer experiences roughly 200 cases per week.

The opportunity to participate in social media responses keeps iQor employees feeling engaged and more fulfilled, resulting in high retention rates.

“This is where I feel like my strength lies. Social Media carries a variety of workloads that I thoroughly enjoy working on.”

Melanie Small, iQor Agent

Quality is Always Maintained

iQor conducts random quality checks on selected pieces of information from customer interactions, reviewing 150 interactions per week across all agents for grammar, punctuation, and resolutions. As a result, customer experience quality is maintained at a high, and stable, rate of 96%.

Overall, the retailer has been extremely pleased with the results as expressed in this message by the Customer Experience Senior Manager:

“Team, another “perfect 10” day in social media performance across the board . . . . Additionally, thanks for the real-time workload assignment adjustments between social media and voice when necessary due to call queue. Please continue leveraging this flexibility that you’ve mastered.”

Social media monitoring interactions

How to Use Social Media Monitoring to Create Exceptional Customer Experiences

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Learn why your brand needs social media monitoring as part of your customer experience digital transformation.

Customers now have the power to shape public opinion, which they can use to their advantage. They can use social media platforms to shape customer experiences in ways that would not have been possible 15 years ago. And with the proper social media monitoring plan in place, businesses have access to a goldmine of opportunities to strengthen customer relationships along their journey. Do you know how successful your brand is using social media to provide an exceptional customer service experience? 

Many brands struggle to respond in a timely manner on social media, and sometimes, at all. The response rates across industries are well, a bit abysmal, with the highest rate going to legal and real estate at 29 percent.  

social media response rates by industry

Part of the challenge of low response rates could be the fact that the number of social media users just keeps growing. In 2021, it was reported that there are 4.5 billion social media users throughout the world, with nine out of ten internet users visiting social media every month. And with that number set to increase every day, it’s ever so critical for businesses to have a solid social media presence and make the most of the platforms when engaging with their customers.

The takeaway? Brands that can exceed the industry-wide benchmarks can bet that they will beat out the competition and win more loyal customers. The challenge, however, is that many companies don’t always understand how to monitor social media for meaningful customer interactions or its implications for not doing it well or at all.

In this post, we dive deep into the importance of social media monitoring in supporting current customers and some of the social media tools available. Your brand can improve customer interactions on social media channels and better understand which issues matter to your customers by understanding social media monitoring in the customer experience.

What is social media monitoring?

In essence, social media monitoring is a brand’s way of providing customer support over social media. With social media monitoring, customer care agents monitor your company’s social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and respond to customer posts and comments.

Social media monitoring also enables businesses to monitor mentions even if a hashtag isn’t used, as some consumers may refer to your company without calling out your brand by name. By tracking these references, companies can respond to customers promptly and address concerns before they get escalated to the customer helpline or before they become the next trending topic on Twitter.

What is the difference between social media monitoring and social media listening?

Despite several significant distinctions, “social media monitoring” and “social media listening” are frequently used interchangeably. From a high level, the processes are comparable, although they’re done for different reasons.

For instance, customer support teams frequently employ social media monitoring to react to what customers are saying, respond to complaints, and answer questions. Social listening, on the other hand, aims to listen to customer experience insights from a broader level to potentially make enhancements to the brand’s services and products.

Both are valuable processes to a brand, but for the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on social media monitoring as this is what brands primarily use within their customer care programs.

What do brands track with social media monitoring?

While there are many types of metrics you can track in a social media conversation, here are some of the essential marks to keep an eye on:

  • Branded terms and brand mentions: The easiest way to stay tuned into social media conversations concerning your business is to track all brand mentions your brand receives on social media. This includes tagged and untagged mentions.
  • Customer sentiment: Not only do you want to know how often your brand is mentioned, but you want to know if customers are happy or upset with your brand.
  • Reviews: Social media monitoring can help you track what people say about your company on native social media review sites, including Facebook, Yelp, and Google. This gives you opportunities to respond directly to mitigate negative reviews and thank those who post positive reviews.
  • Hashtags: You’ll want to track hashtags that are relevant to your business and industry so you can get a sense of how your target audience perceives your company and competitors.
  • Competition: Speaking of such, use social media monitoring to see how people talk about your competitors and how competitors are engaging with their customers.

Social media monitoring increases customer loyalty and value

Social media monitoring tools can help brands respond to consumers faster. Not only does this allow your customers to feel heard, but it’s good for revenue too. A study by Harvard Business Review found that customers who have a complaint handled in less than five minutes go on to spend more on future purchases.

social media monitoring increases customer loyalty and value

In the same study, simply receiving a response, any response at all, increased the customer’s willingness to pay later even in cases where customers were extremely frustrated. For airlines, providing any response resulted in the customer paying almost $9 more for a ticket on that airline in the future. For that same airline, successfully solving an issue can create more value by about $6.

For wireless carriers, customers who got any response to their negative tweet were on average willing to pay $7 per month more for a wireless plan from that company than customers who got no response. For cases where the issue was resolved, they were willing to pay $8 more. And even if the agent couldn’t resolve the issue, simply responding resulted in a customer’s willingness to pay $6 more.

Receiving a response from customer care also improved Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 37 points for airlines and 59 points for wireless carriers.

The lesson here is that no matter how frustrated, customers always appreciate a response, even if it’s a simple acknowledgment. By defusing their aggravation in any capacity, whether it’s an empathic response, quick answer, or problem resolution, brands can steer the customer back on the path to loyalty and satisfaction.

Responses to positive comments pay out too

The Harvard Business Review study mentioned above also found that the highest increases in a customer’s willingness to pay came when brands responded to a positive comment about its company. Receiving a response to a positive comment generated $28 more for a future airline ticket and $12 more per month for wireless plans.

The takeaway here is that customers who say good things about your business on social media are highly valuable. They are your advocates and brand loyalists. By acknowledging them and thanking them for their kind words, you are generating happy customers and more revenue.

How do brands use social media monitoring?

1. Answer Questions

Let’s assume you run customer support at an airline and a person tags your brand name on social media to determine the price of checking a bag. If your company uses effective social media monitoring, a customer support rep will respond promptly to that customer with up-to-date pricing information and any other information they may need. The customer may have follow-up issues, so the representative should stick around to respond quickly if there is anything else the customer needs help with.

A great example is the gaming brand, Xbox. The company is actually a winner of the Guinness World Record for “Most Responsive Brand on Twitter” (yes, that’s a thing!). They were noted for being able to reply to their customers in less than three minutes on average, contributing to their dedicated customer service handle @XboxSupport.

Xbox customer support tweet

Social media monitoring tools can also be used to respond to suggestions which can lead to making improvements to your products or services. When someone made a product suggestion on Twitter to Tesla, they implemented the change within a couple of weeks. Way to show your customers that you’re listening!

Tesla tweetx

2. Resolve issues or complaints

Although not all concerns are critical, problems and complaints must be addressed promptly to assist distressed consumers and limit the spread of negative sentiment on social media.

Imagine the same customer is later upset that the plane’s in-flight Wi-Fi didn’t work correctly in the airline scenario. In today’s connected world, the airline has the opportunity to address the issue quickly before the comment negatively affects their brand’s reputation.

Leaving complaints unattended is like abandoning calls at your contact center, but worse. Not only do customers not get the help they need, but you also now have thousands of people who see that you ignored a customer.

Social media monitoring can help agents prioritize customer complaints so they can respond quickly or invite the customer to a private interaction to prevent the exchange from escalating publicly.

Brands can also use social media monitoring to triage complaints and avoid crises with broader messaging. If there’s a common issue springing up, you can bring in your public relations or communications team to minimize the potential of negative press.

3. Thank customers for positive feedback

While it’s true that some customers voice negative comments on social media platforms, there is also good to be found as well! Keep an eye out for the positive comments people make about your business on social media. Too often, these postings go unnoticed because customer support teams don’t react. Not responding to positive customer comments is akin to hanging up on a happy customer without saying thank you.

Best social media monitoring practices say you should respond promptly to the customer. For example, “We’re happy to have helped; please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to assist you further…” Or, say thank you in a way that’s true to your brand’s personality, like Zappos:

Zappos tweet

4. Promote more products and services through replies

People are typically extremely honest on social media, so when someone is excited about a product or an excellent service experience, brands should take advantage of the opportunity to engage with them.

You can use what you know about a customer’s recent purchase to offer them (and your other followers) related products and experiences in an organic way.

Take Airbnb, for instance. When a customer announces on Twitter that they’re taking a trip using Airbnb, the company will usually follow up with a friendly conversation like, “Where are you heading?” If the customer responds with the destination of Miami, for example, Airbnb will reply with their featured experiences in that city.

When Airbnb customer support staff makes these kinds of interactions, they are essentially getting free marketing. Its replies also show up in the mentions of other friends tagged in the response, further multiplying the reach of this tweet-by-tweet campaign.

Airbnb tweet

5. Increase customer engagement

If you want more people talking about your business or receiving more reviews, then social media monitoring is a great way to engage with customers and provide calls to action. Like the Airbnb example, you can invite customers to engage with your brand through online surveys and even tweeting out discounts and promotions.

The food grocer giant Whole Foods is a notable example. Not only does it share healthy recipes and relevant stories, but it also routinely hosts Twitter chats too. It also gets followers talking about the brand by frequently sending out calls to action, such as asking Twitter users interesting questions or encouraging them to share or vote for favorite recipes.

Whole Foods tweet

Social media monitoring tools

Now that the benefits of social media monitoring are clear, you’re probably wondering how to do it. The good news is that there are plenty of tools out there to choose from. We’ve compiled a list of tools and their targeted users to help you narrow it down.

  1. Sprout Social: A powerful, all-in-one social media management platform that customer care teams use to deliver responsive support.
  2. Sprinklr: Prides itself in being the only unified customer experience management platform. Uses AI to create insight-driven strategies across 30+ channels.
  3. Hootsuite: Provides a dashboard to oversee your social media management and marketing while creating a one-stop shop for your social media marketing needs.
  4. TweetDeck: This Twitter-owned social media monitoring and management tool allows you to schedule tweets and track hashtag mentions. And it’s free!
  5. Talkwalker: Provides actionable social media analytics and monitoring using AI.
  6. Geofeedia: Integrates location-based analytics into its social media management strategies.
  7. Snaptrends: Another geo-based social media management tool that turns location-based insights into suggestions for next steps and actions.
  8. Oktopost: Designed specifically for LinkedIn, this tool automatically tracks groups and discussions.

Develop your social media monitoring CX strategy first

This is a partial list of social media monitoring tools. For a complete list of tools visit the G2 page on this topic. 

The tools listed above are extremely useful. That said, your strategy for interacting with customers on social channels should be the first step. A customer experience program that leverages social media monitoring is a valuable way to respond to customers and prospective customers whether they’re expressing negative or positive sentiment. And when it comes to customer care, providing a meaningful digital customer experience should be a baseline part of your strategy. Let us know if we can help.