Is Social Media Part of Overall Customer Service or a Replacement?

Oddly enough, I am starting to worry about the growth of social media that is used to listen and reach out to unhappy customers. Not that this is an inherently bad thing, in fact it is wonderful development to be more customer-centric. My concern is that social media is increasingly seen as a new improved, whiter, cheaper, better approach. Many organizations continue to struggle in creating a consistent and integrated view of the customer. The corporate website speaks with one voice; the call center and the field rep speak with other voices – too often at odds. In some retail environments, the web is treated as a separate and competitive branch or store. Is customer service with social media taking the same ill-advised route? The customer wants to speak to the organization in whatever happens to be most convenient way at that specific moment, but the method could vary from day to day, issue to issue. They harbor the belief that it all comes together in some magical fashion – the reality is that is does not come together at all.
This brings to mind a certain degree of déjà vu. Six years ago; we measured the role of incoming email that allowed customers to ask questions to the company directly, often for the first time. The Contact Us button was a magic open door, bypassing traditional less responsive channels. In those six years, the response rate for a timely and helpful email reply rarely exceeded 30 percent. Did email make the customer feel service had improved? Mostly they feel disrespected. The integration of email with call center and field rep never really happened; it continues to be a struggle.
So now, we have social media and new multiple ways to contact the organization, or is it multiple ways and opportunities to confuse the overall experience? Are ‘tweets’ going to mature to be part of the overall and recorded experience or are they destined to be a new competitive channel, too often forced into apologizing for poor customer service in the traditional channels but in effect creating another long term legacy problem? What is the role of social media in the total picture of customer service? It will not, for some time or ever, replace or replicate the telephone or field rep; it might replace email! But, how does the call center agent cope with promises made to customers by often unknown, bright, relatively senior, dedicated individuals? Will social media make traditional channels look increasingly worse in comparison? Will it attract unmanageable volumes? This is the real challenge for social media – to be a fully integrated part of the overall solution and not to become an alternative or counter-culture.