Social Customer Service is Here

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.