Turn Customer Care into „Social Care“ – Gadi Benmark and Dan Singer – Harvard Business Review

Social media has conditioned consumers to getting immediate feedback. In fact, a lot of customer service these days is happening via social media, and customers expect you to respond as though you were one of their Twitter followers. More than 50% of Twitter users expect a response in less than two hours, a lot shorter than most companies‘ response windows.

Enter social care, a system for companies to regularly provide customer service through social-media platforms. Social care can save money. It costs less than $1 per interaction, whereas telephone care is typically at least $6 per call. Even e-mail care costs $2.50 to $5 per interaction. But the real benefit is to the customer experience. Almost 30% of social-media users prefer social care to phoning customer service (and it’s not just the young set; even over-65s use social care, with 17% preferring it to the telephone). Consumers with positive social-care experiences are also three times more likely to recommend the brand to others.

via Turn Customer Care into „Social Care“ to Break Away from the Competition – Gadi Benmark and Dan Singer – Harvard Business Review.

Great posting. I would add Customer Self Service Communities as another pillar of Social Care. Case Studies from IBM developerworks or Cisco are two examples, how you can unleash the power of Communities, provide better service and save money!