How to Guarantee Your Social Customer Service Strategy Will Fail

Though some media outlets refuse to admit it, the brutal reality is that the marketplace for articles on this "new phenomenon" called social customer care is dying.

At this point, few with an interest in reading business articles are unaware that social media, once revered merely for its potential to inexpensively grow brand awareness, can play a role in the customer service experience. Hell, few without an interest in reading business articles would be surprised by that reality.

With the concept of social customer service firmly established, emphasis is shifting towards explaining why it has not yet been successful.

That social marketing is not necessarily living up to ROI expectations is neither surprising nor perplexing; pressure to build large social networks without concern for the criteria that define and nurture qualified leads will obviously result in unfruitful initiatives.

But insofar as social customer service seems far simpler to initiate and maintain—companies simply need to listen, respond, engage and deliver the way they would in any support channel—its failure to launch is vastly more troubling. Culturally, society remains in the midst of a rapid gravitation towards alternatives to the telephone. Why, then, does the concept of social customer service seem unable to even move in that direction, let alone with the same ferocity?

While not all articles attack the question of social customer service failure so explicitly (though Citibank’s Frank Eliason very much does), most which focus on the topic are indeed focuses on the qualities that separate success from failure. Their titles might suggest a more introductory, "how to" approach, but when reminding business leaders to respond to positive comments as well as negative ones, to consider more than just direct financial ROI and to staff and fund their social teams as full-fledged support channels rather than fun side projects, they are attempting to direct businesses away from common hurdles to excellence.

Unfortunately, speaking from a position of experience is not the same as speaking from a position of expertise, and it is from within one such article that the essence of social media failure became abundantly clear.

In an article apparently designed to help professionals "use social media as customer service," Mathaba steers such professionals completely off the rails. It reminds them, "Social media is a great venue for conversation, but ultimately the goal of social media is to direct customers back to the website of the business."

Ludicrous enough at face, the comment also speaks directly to the most tragic of misconceptions concerning social media and particularly social customer care: that it is a means to an end.

One should neither doubt nor ignore the essential role social can play in fueling broader business objectives. One should never downplay the fact that social media can be incorporated into an overall, cross-functional business strategy.

But recognizing social’s role in a greater business strategy does not require one to reduce it to a "means to an end." It does not require one to downplay social as a standalone focus and instead treat it as a tool for accomplishing a specific business task.

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Most importantly, it does not require—and, in fact, does not permit—a business to turn off social when it would rather accomplish an end through different means.

Unfortunately, far too many brands make the mistake of reducing social to an instrument. Rather than approaching social as a 24/7/365 means of engaging customers, they look at it as a "quick fix" for controlling PR nightmares and bursts of negative publicity. Rather than approaching social as a full-fledged customer support channel, they use it as a means for quickly diverting customers to a channel they prefer—like the phone or a company website--rather than as a means of connecting on customers’ terms.

Social, essentially, becomes their line of protection against nuisance and inconvenience. When things become too challenging to handle in the traditional marketing or customer support framework, they turn to social for a "quick fix." At no point, however, are they recognizing social as the game itself. It is a tool for achieving an end rather than the end. Once some degree of damage control is achieved, social loses its relevance until the next nuisance emerges.

Customers, however, do not necessarily share this philosophy. Customers Tweet for support not because they lost the 800-number but because they actually want—and expect—service in that channel. They open the door to conversations with brands not because they want to be quieted, sold to or redirected to a website but because they see social as a productive communication channel.

And insofar as customer-centric businesses must operate in accordance with customers’ framework, it is simply not their prerogative to reduce social media into a functional asset. When brands use Facebook as an opportunity for capturing customer communication rather than engaging in it, brands are confirming, loudly and clearly, that such social engagement is not their priority. To them, social is a means rather than an end.

And that mindset will forever doom organizations to failure. In addition to assuring they remain tragically disconnected from customers, it will also misguide organizations on the operational competencies behind their social endeavors. Metrics will be misaligned with the reality of today’s social marketplace. Staff and resources will be invested based on the broader business "tasks" for which social can provide assistance rather than on the fundamental, standalone tenets of the social customer service channel.

Failure will be guaranteed.

By embracing its value beyond marketing and adopting more nuanced, layered performance benchmarks, many organizations are making progress on the road to social customer service excellence. Unfortunately, the majority of those organizations are simply replacing their troubled fate with a lesser-degree of failure. Better appreciating and measuring social media are important first steps, but at the end of the day, those who refuse to recognize its independent priority—and independent value to customers—cannot possibly succeed.

If customers walked into a brick-and-mortar storefront with interest in learning about a product, a successful organization’s first instinct would not be to send that customer to an official website. If a customer called the toll-free support line for assistance, a successful organization’s first instinct would not be to direct that customer to its Facebook page.

Why, then, would a successful brand even consider using Facebook as a means to get customers to engage on its official website? Why would it entertain the notion of asking Tweeters to contact the official 1-800 number for support?

When customers engage on social, they are providing organizations with a rare dose of free intelligence. They are trumpeting their channel preferences, loudly and clearly, to the business.

If the business’ instinct is to ignore the essence of that information and send the customer elsewhere, how can it possibly expect to succeed?