Week 3A: Communication Btwn. Business & Customer
Upon reflection, I have not had a glaring instance in trying to communicate a problem to a company over social media, though I do remember reaching out to companies frequently when I really started getting into the social Web around 2008. Even then it didn’t do much, so that discouraged me moving forward.
Since it is now 2018, I think it is more challenging to get noticed and have your problem solved online as there are so many users. This could be indicative of how businesses need to bite the bullet and have a designated person on staff that focuses on damage control and other endeavors.
A positive experience I recently had over email was with a local app developer. I told him about the sextet I manage and that they often are looking for new tech for composing and executing electroacoustic pieces. He responded within the hour and sent me 5 codes to download the app for free. I offered to relay feedback from the group. Whether or not they use the app from this moment onward, he will get opinions from actual users. I think his benefit of feedback as a start-up app outweighs the loss of $5 in app downloads.
I can attest to how important it is to stay on top of responding to comments, whether negative or positive. Since Facebook business pages has introduced the “message response rate” badge, it is all too easy to watch that percentage rate fall from 100% based on a few inbox messages.
I haven’t found the right technique in keeping up with the notifications as I’ve seen different approaches from other companies. Some pages will “like” your “like” or comment within mere seconds of having finished, and that creates a ping in my notifications, which I find a little bit annoying for my taste to have my notifications log blowing up every second; in response to the constant notifications, I turned them off for my personal Instagram and Snapchat accounts. I wonder if other users are doing just the same? Group, what do you think?
Furthermore, I need to find a system for responding to the posts people make, whether I just “like” the comment, respond with a comment such as “great!” or “thank you!”, etc. This could be my next independent research project for the social networks I manage...hopefully there is already data out there, but if not, I think it’s a worthy project to tackle.
Yes I also said how difficult is it in 2018 to be noticed but your right, you would need a dedicated person to answer the comments. I have seen great companies use Facebook and post great pictures and video but was riddled with bad comments and no answers to them.
ReplyDeleteHi Storm,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that it is difficult nowadays to communicate with businesses because there is so much heavy traffic online. However, for small businesses it can be really beneficial to use social media so that they can gain exposure and new clients/customers. Businesses are starting to realize that they need to hire people for social media management so hopefully that will solve this issue in 2018.
And not to mention, open up more jobs!
DeleteI have experienced the frustrations with getting resolution on problems as well, Storm. And this has often discouraged me from using social media to try to resolve issues with company, just as it has for you. I still prefer to find a phone number for a company and call them with my concerns. Unfortunately, many companies don't provide phone numbers any longer.
ReplyDelete