#PositivelySocial and why customer service in social media is a failure – Interview with Frank Eliason

Summary: Following on from my recent interview, Employee engagement is not something that is done to employees – Interview with Kevin Kruse, today I'm very excited to share with you an interview that I recently conducted with Frank Eliason, the father of social service or customer service on social media, about his new book. This interview makes up number twenty-five in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses. Below are highlights from our interview: Formerly at Comcast and originator of @comcastcares Now SVP for Social Media at Citibank A simple customer service guy Just published a book @YourService, which is a mix of marketing, customer service and PR but is really about what is the culture of your company The book takes a storytelling approach and social media is a lot about storytelling Storytelling is a really powerful way to drive change in organisations Stories can be just as important if not more important than big data in delivering insight and change in customer experience Social media is a channel that helps us build human connections with our customers, build understanding and build intimacy. Frank pictures a day when calls are routed to someone in an organisation who has similar interests. The best customer experiences that you have had were never the ones that were the most efficient or the quickest. The ones that you remember are the ones where you made a connection or shared an isight with someone. Facilitating those type of connections is at the heart of what Frank calls Scalable Intimacy Also, imagines a day when a company's marketing materials are not about the company's vision of things but are instead oriented towards what a customer would be interested in. But, intimacy is missing in a lot of businesses and things that we have done. We're getting away from the fundamental issue and that is understanding our customers. It's one thing that many small businesses do really well and many larger businesses need to do better on this. In most cases, customer service in social media or social service is a failure. Most people don't necessarily want social media customer service hey just want service to be done right. Often, many customers take to social media because they are frustrated with other service channels. Also, it sends the wrong message to all of your customers if customers have to take to social media to get attention. Fix the core first. Companies should focus on what can we deliver, how we deliver and how can we do that the best we can. Great case studies and stories within the interview so do have a listen. We need to help our people get out from behind our process, policy, technology and all the legal caveats and let them connect with people. Social media is much more personal than people realise. Trust comes from human to human connection. People don't tend to trust brands, they trust individuals. So, if companies want to build trust then they have to do it through their greatest asset…their employees. Encourage companies to get their employees involved in social media and teach them about it, what they can do and what they shouldn't do. Doing this will also send a message to employees that we trust them. Your employees will do it anyway so if you stop them then all you are saying to them is that you don't trust them. We need to start building Relationship Hubs in our businesses, environments that allow us to build connections and trust with our customers. We've done so much over the years to get as far away as possible from our customers. We've outsourced our customer service departments because it is seen as a cost centre. Also, many large company CEOs are not talking directly to their customers, they are not developing that personal insight and understanding, they're too distant from their customers.