In my latest Cortex newsletter I referred to “tone deaf” corporations who have flexible technology like corporate social media in place, but lack the organizational flexibility to use it properly. The result is a negative customer experience that defeats the entire purpose of interacting with customers.
Not all large corporations are tone deaf, however. So instead of finding an egregious example of tone deafness and lambasting it, I actually found an example of a corporation who uses social media in an exemplary way. Let’s see what Delta Airlines is doing right.
The screenshot above is from the Delta Facebook page. Delta regularly posts promotional and PR pieces to the page, and in this case, they are telling the story of a long-time employee. Giving a human face to the company is a good practice to be sure, but doesn’t leverage the social aspect of Facebook – how Delta handles the comments does.
As often happens, a disgruntled customer decided to post a grievance. Delta could have answered with a formulaic response (tone deaf) or chosen not to respond at all (even more tone deaf). But instead, a real person responded with an on-point apology. Furthermore, this real person signed the response with her name (I’ll assume Alex is female for the sake of simplicity) – so even though she is posting under the Delta corporate account, the customer, as well as everybody else viewing the interchange, knows a human being at Delta is responding.
If Alex’s response ended at a simple apology, however, such a response would still be tone deaf, because it wouldn’t have addressed the problem. But in this case, she also provided a link to the complaints page and actually recommended to the customer that she file a formal complaint. In other words, Delta uses social media to empower its customers – the one who complained, and of course, everyone else who happens to see the link.
It could be argued that Alex was simply handing off the customer to someone else, thus passing the buck. In this case, however, I believe the response was the best that could be expected, as the details of the customer’s complaint aren’t salient for a public forum like social media. Naturally, the complaints Web site might drop the ball, but as far as Delta’s handling of social media, they have shown a mastery of the medium.
So, who is Alex? Is she in customer service or public relations? The answer, of course, is both – which shows a customer-facing organizational strategy at Delta that many other companies struggle with. Where is your customer service? Likely in a call center, which you may have even outsourced. Where is your PR? Likely out of your marketing department, or yes, even outsourced to a PR firm.
How do these respective teams interact with customers? The call center rep follows a script, and if a problem deviates, the rep has to escalate to a manager. Any communications from the PR firm go through several approvals within the firm and at the client before they hit the wire. In other words, the power rests centrally with corporate management.
However, not only does a social media response team like Alex’s bring together customer service and PR, but whatever script she follows can only be a loose guideline, or responses would sound formulaic, and hence tone deaf. Instead, Delta has empowered Alex and her colleagues to take charge of the customer interaction, and in turn, Alex empowers customers to take control of their interactions with Delta.
The secret to corporate social media success? Empowerment. Trust the people on the front lines to interact with customers, and trust the customer as well. Loosen the ties to management. Social media are social, not hierarchical. After all, Digital Transformation is always about transforming people.
