I was amazed a month ago
when l experienced first-hand the power of social media in customer service. I had
a problem with my account at BancABC and decided to use social media to
complain to management at the bank. The first platform l visited was my Twitter
account @EdMasau and shared my experience with my 67 follows, then my Facebook
page which has 737 friends. This means l directly vented out my frustrations
with the service l was getting to 804 people online, give or take that some of
my Facebook friends are also my followers on twitter, the number is still
amazingly huge.
But that is not all. Amongst
my follows on Twitter there are some individuals who are commanding a huge
following and they retweeted my article that l wrote about BancABC. Let me
share with you the numbers: @SirNige 5462, @263Chat 4122, @Joe Black 1110, @thenextowne
336, @sonikans 163 and @twimbos 119. The article l wrote also appeared on www.consumerizim.com where 20 people
shared it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I cannot tell how many other
people are in these 20 people’s social networks but your guess is as good as
mine. I calculated the total number of people who potentially where reached by
my article and they numbered 12 136. That is unbelievable!
This got me thinking. Gone
are the days when we used to say that a customer will share their bad customer
experience through word of mouth by telling 9 people who will in turn tell 5
people each and so on. Social media makes it possible for a customer to tell
thousands of people about their experience with your business in a click of a
button. The prospect this brings is disturbing for businesses.
In Zimbabwe as
mobile penetration reaches saturation and smart phones get into the hands of
most subscribers there is need for businesses to change their customer service
strategies to incorporate use of social media. The leading three social media
platforms Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are a wonderful source of interaction between
your business and customers. The interaction is in real time and the feedback
instant making it a mutually beneficial social network.
I took a survey on these
three platforms to establish the embrace of social media as a customer service
engagement tool among corporates in Zimbabwe. The results showed that the two
largest telecommunications companies Econet and Telecel enjoy the lion’s share
of followers on social media as a means to engage customers. The below table
shows the results of the survey carried out on Friday 17 May 2013:
|
Company
|
Facebook
|
Twitter
|
LinkedIn
|
|
Econet Wireless
|
207,473
|
5,015
|
2,166
|
|
Telecel Zimbabwe
|
185,279
|
35,709
|
920
|
|
Netone
|
2,280
|
0
|
0
|
|
AfrAsia Kingdom
|
637
|
90
|
0
|
|
BancABC
|
434*
|
0
|
450
|
|
Standard Chartered
Zimbabwe
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
Barclays Zimbabwe
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
Stanbic Zimbabwe
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
CBZ
|
0
|
0
|
623
|
|
NMBZ
|
0
|
0
|
129
|
|
FBC
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
Spar Zimbabwe
|
3,712
|
34
|
0
|
|
OK Zimbabwe
|
0
|
18
|
0
|
|
Food World
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
African Sun
|
1,849*
|
466
|
401
|
|
Cresta Hospitality
|
0
|
0
|
154
|
|
Rainbow Tourism Group
|
0
|
0
|
37
|
*These
companies last posted on Facebook in 2012.
The reality of the above
figures is that more still needs to be done by Zimbabwe’s corporates to
increase their footprint on social media. Once they have increased visibility
there is need to harness the data exchanged on these social media platforms so
that it can be used to improve customer service experiences.
To help companies in this
regard they can engage the services of a customer service social media consultant
who can help increase this visibility and make sense of the data that is exchanged
with customers. The advantage of using social media is that it is a cheap
source of engaging customers in real time. I look forward to a time when more
Zimbabwean companies take their customer service strategies to the social
media. In the meantime let me relax, update my status and tweet my next
customer experience.
