Missed Connections: Social Media in CX

We're social creatures. Community-oriented and obsessed with communication, our desire to share everything from feedback on a product to photos of our pets on the social platform of our choice follows human logic. It's fast, free, and relatively simple to get a Reddit post or an Instagram story out to our network of people and beyond. We're all customers, and there's a natural progression from sharing life updates to live-tweeting a time-sensitive complaint at a business. Customers feel heard on social media in large part due to the public nature of the customer channel. They expect an issue to be treated urgently due to how many are watching the interaction.

As a former social media manager with a passion for written content, I've seen how social platforms can reinforce or undermine a customer experience. My professional social experience can be grouped into two functions, social strategy and community management. Strategy involved campaign and content flow management, long- and short-form brand copy such as tweets and blog articles, and pitching ideas to my creative directors, project managers, and clients. 

Community management included writing, getting approval for, and tapping send on messages and comments. Outreach on other brands' content to increase visibility was also a part of our day-to-day, as well as creating DM template responses to common concerns. What it didn't include, however, was any connection to customer service teams — the individuals actually executing on the messages we were often sending.

Having worked in external brand roles at agencies as well as in-house for a non-profit and a university, the difference in processes between internal and external social teams is glaring. A big differentiator is the autonomy that social teams are allowed. In an agency setting, as a brand's external team member, our direct client communication was limited. Externally, our job was to position ourselves as reliable in a social media crisis. We delivered excellent, consistent community management and strategic offerings.

Operationally, however, community managers are often left out of client conversations because they're only seen as executors rather than the frontline customer experience experts they are. Representing the face of the brand, social media managers work in a public space. Project managers and creative directors often act as client liaisons, and customer insights can be filtered through so many individuals that clients don't ever get the specificity needed to make crucial changes. Social media managers, however, are placed in a role where they're meant to be responsive and keep customers satisfied with the timeliness of these responses. However, due to the lack of communication with customer service teams, these community managers are put in a tricky situation. They face pressure to keep customers happy while being unable to make real improvements.

Responding to direct messages with a pre-approved script felt disingenuous, even if they weren't sent by bots. If I wanted to veer from the template, it'd take approval from several different higher-ups from both the agency and brand. Facing a large volume of daily messages across myriad clients, it was unrealistic to tailor each response perfectly when each one would take at least a few hours (and a few hoops) to get approval. Repetitive complaints and negative feedback didn't have a clear place to go because saving face and maintaining brand consistency came before getting to the root of customer issues.

So how can this be solved? A good start is opening a line of communication between social media managers and contact centers. This involves frequent meetings which include the whole team, and community managers organizing customer feedback to be presented to the client with proposed action items for change. Scheduling constant touchpoints, both when issues arise and when they're fixed, is essential to close loops and fully utilize social media managers as frontline service researchers. Leaders need to view this role as more than just an extension of the marketing team, and instead, as content specialists trained to handle customer feedback from a channel that's only going to grow in prevalence. Working toward a more unified brand-agency partnership yields more authentic feedback from customers who feel listened to, and results in experiences that are constantly improving. Social media managers need empowerment as they deliver excellent service based on some of the most targeted customer feedback.

Image credit to Berke Citak via Unsplash.