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Customer service used to be all about phone conversations and face-to-face interactions, but today many people prefer to communicate with the companies with which they do business via social media, mobile communications, or whatever mode or device is the most convenient at a given time. Indeed, customers are increasingly bypassing the letter, the fax, the telephone, the contact form, and even e-mail in favor of Twitter and Facebook because it's faster - and because they can.
This creates both opportunity and risk for businesses. When customer complaints and company responses are publicly visible in social media, every service interaction becomes another data point in the overall perception of your brand. That can be problematic, but it's also a chance to tell the world that you care about your customers.
"Different channels have built in different expectations from users in terms of speed of response," notes Tony Kavanagh, vice president of marketing for Salesforce Service Cloud. "Social media in general moves quickly, so things spin out of control very, very...