Brandsclub used Conversocial to create a thriving customer service hub out of a potential social media disaster.
Brandsclub is a hugely successful online retailer in Brazil. Through their website they sell items from leading fashion brands such as Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret and Tommy Hilfiger, allowing members to purchase deals with discounts of up to 90%. Brandsclub has grown to 180 employees within only 3 years, and now has over 5 million members. They have one of the largest Facebook pages in Brazil.
In December 2010 a warehouse was relocated, significantly disrupting logistics during the critical Christmas period. There was a growing customer service backlog in the usual channels – primarily chat and email – as disgruntled members tried to track the status of their orders. These customers started to vent their frustration via Facebook, posting public complaints to try and reach a customer service representative. Brandsclub was soon receiving 350 queries a week on their page.
Marketers usually spent their time stimulating fan engagement, but instead they were now overwhelmed dealing with customer support issues. At first, they responded by trying to push customers back to email and chat to try and control the problem, whilst continuing to push marketing and acquisition campaigns to counter customers’ negativity. Yet they soon realised that this wasn’t the solution.
“We decided to improve our customer relationships directly through Facebook by effectively addressing our customers’ service demands.” Said Jardel Appelt, Head of Social Media, “Traditional PR approaches wouldn’t work to silence angry fans. Responding to their Facebook comments personally showed how concerned we were, and how committed we were to resolving the issues. We wanted to demonstrate our desire to make our customers happy and at the same time give a much better impression of the company to new fans. We embraced social customer service.”
Yet dealing with issues via social networks couldn’t easily fit into the existing business organisation. For the Social Media team, involving the customer service department became slow and inefficient. They had to email or call already overloaded customer service agents in an attempt to pinpoint individual comments, gain relevant information for appropriate responses, and then reply on their behalf. This process took far too long, and complaints left unanswered would encourage others to also air their grievances, making the volume of comments even more unmanageable; there was a ‘snowball effect’. To solve the problem they needed to plug customer service agents directly into the process and reach their customers faster. They needed a technological solution, as using Facebook directly didn’t provide the necessary tools.
Turning things around:
Brandsclub needed to treat Facebook and Twitter as channels on par with traditional customer support media, where every single message was analysed, and responses tracked accordingly. They researched suitable options and signed up for a free trial of Conversocial. Within 2-3 weeks, Conversocial was fully implemented across two departments, and Brandsclub was able to turn the situation around. Conversocial’s ability to quickly identify comments that required action meant that Brandsclub staff could focus on responding to complaints and questions promptly. Enabling customer services to work directly with Facebook comments and posts took away the barriers that had been slowing them down.
Brandsclub regained control of their social network channels. Their open approach has been well received by customers and to date Brandsclub has observed a 64% reduction in complaints on Facebook. Over the same time period, the company has also seen a reduction of complaints in other channels, demonstrating how using resources more effectively had a positive effect across the whole business.
Conversocial couldn’t have been integrated too soon. In May, Brandsclub had a brief downtime crisis that saw Facebook interactions reach 9,000 per day. Their new system for handling social media complaints allowed them to take this in their stride, separating actionable customer service enquiries from the more general community management that was needed to calm the situation. Brandsclub has a team of four using Conversocial to manage its Facebook page. One team member stays on top of all incoming communication, moderates the page and assigns customer service issues to two customer service representatives using Conversocial’s simple workflow tools.
“With Conversocial, the team reduced the time they spend managing social networks from 4 to 2 hours per day, whilst achieving quicker responses, from happier staff, to even more customers,” said Appelt. “No matter where a fan tries to communicate with us, Conversocial brings in these messages as they happen, making sure they are seen in one streamlined place.”
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Janssen, part of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies, has been one of the pharmaceutical companies to keep their page open since Facebook’s enforced open wall policy on August 15th.
Facebook once allowed pharmacuetical companies to run pages with a closed wall, due to legal requirements to respond to all questions, no matter where they take place. Now these companies must make a choice: open the Facebook wall to consumer comments, or shut down the page. Beyond legal obligations, unmoderated wall content is a critical problem for pharmaceutical pages with strong concerns over fans creating unfounded fears about side effects.
Janssen has kept its page open, using Conversocial to keep content posted by fans thoroughly moderated and audited, whilst other pharmacuetical companies have shut down their pages. One such example is Amgen, who ran the “Breakaway from Cancer” page, citing moderating the wall as too great a challenge for the company for the time being.
By using Facebook management tools, like Conversocial, to manage posts and company responses, firms like Janssen can benefit from engagement with those using their products. The open wall provides valuable information for consumers and feedback for Janssen. A support community is created for sufferers - patients have expressed their appreciation for Janssen maintianing dialogue with them on the Facebook wall.
Janssen show the rest that pharmaceutical companies can be social too. Hear what Janssen have to say on how they are managing this challenge, using Conversocial, in MM&M here.
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As the world’s number one daily deals company, Groupon have a heavy social media workload, with Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for nearly all of their market cities. With social properties to cover over 500 cities across 40 countries worldwide, and multiple teams to manage them, Groupon developed a real need to manage a rapidly growing, international, social customer base. Reaching hundreds of thousands of fans and followers was a time consuming task, which was increasingly difficult to measure.
Marcus Pappert, Head of Groupon’s Social Media Marketing in Germany, lead the company’s efforts to find a solution.
“With many international teams working on our numerous Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, a means of managing these has become a necessity. We found Conversocial to provide the best service on the market for our ever-growing social media activity.”
Groupon’s international teams are now using Conversocial to automate the publishing of daily deals to all of their fan pages with custom RSS feeds; messages can be sent to fans across different cities in just one click, with multi-page posting.
Consolidated reporting and analytics give insights across Groupon’s many social properties. Conversocial’s cross-platform engagement metric, IPM, allows them to benchmark the success of one Facebook page or Twitter account against another. Teams across the world are now using our tool to manage support issues coming through social media. Having full workflow and conversation history allows customer service teams to stay on top of queries, complaints and questions with much greater ease.
We’re really excited to be working with an industry leader like Groupon and look forward to working closely with them in our ongoing development of Conversocial.
Conversocial is a Social Media Management System that helps businesses manage the increasing volume of two-way communication going through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Through in-depth engagement analytics and comprehensive comment management tools, Conversocial enables effective marketing distribution and customer support.
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Today is Community Manager Appreciation Day; the annual celebration, conceived by Jeremiah Owyang, of the hard work invested to keep customer communities running smoothly.
This great idea inspired us to find out more about some Community Managers we know, so we reached out to our own customers and spoke to Digital PR and Communities Manager at Cybercom, David Hayes
What role do you have as a community manager in contributing to your clients' wider business goals?
As the digital PR and Communities Manager I am responsible for ensuring that our clients’ digital PR is being implemented to ensure good customer service and brand engagement with their customers. In today’s social space our clients understand that engagement with their customers is key to their bottom line.
What different communities do you manage and what does this involve?
I manage a range of large communities in conjunction with client customer service teams for large FMCG brands and other smaller communities. I am responsible for moderation for these communities in addition to strategic planning, organizing publishing schedules and advising clients on best practices in the social media space.
What is the most challenging element of being a community manager?
One has to have a level head when dealing with large communities. There can be a tendency to get too involved when in fact community management is like being at a party ensuring that everything runs smoothly. One has to constantly be a brand evangelist and ensure that the brand’s message is being delivered in a way that does not deter or upset the community. The most challenging part is that you have to be ‘always on’. Communities don’t sleep so they have to be managed 24/7.
Has Conversocial helped you to overcome some obstacles of being a community manager?
Conversocial is an essential tool. It allows me to be able to filter out unwanted elements from communities, particularly for large, well-known brands that can be affected by constant spamming. As with all communities we have to ensure that no one is offended or abused and Conversocial allows me to manage multiple Facebook pages at one glance to ensure that no unwanted comments or posts are getting through.
Conversocial is a Social Media Management System that helps businesses manage the increasing volume of two-way communication going through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Through in-depth engagement analytics and comprehensive comment management tools, Conversocial enables effective marketing distribution, moderation and customer support.
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Leading Social Media Management Company Tempero pioneered the adoption of Social Media Management System (SMMS) Conversocial, as one of the first agencies to use the tool to moderate its clients’ Facebook pages. Tempero manages over 30 pages through Conversocial, for big brands such as Sainsbury’s, the BBC, Activision and Manchester United.
Conversocial gives Tempero a centralised hub through which to deal with their diverse clients. Each Facebook page has different potential threats as each brand has its own requirements, so moderation must be tailored accordingly. Tempero has set bespoke keyword lists for auto-flagging and auto-deletion for its different client pages, to ensure relevant reputation risks are avoided.
Following general wisdom against the application of censorship in social media, Tempero only auto-delete the most damaging content. The rest is flagged, for moderators to take the most appropriate action. When comments must be deleted, moderators attach internal notes to explain why; for example if they class as offensive content, or were posted by a repeat offending spammer.
Conversocial allows Tempero to bring their moderation efforts into one place, despite the differences between their clients. As subscribers to the Enterprise package, the agency can restrict page views to different moderators, giving them access to only their assigned tasks and reserving settings for managers.
Dom Sparkes, CEO and Co-Founder of Tempero, describes the value the tool has added for his business. “Using Conversocial has had a dramatic effect on the Facebook services we offer our clients both in terms on efficiency and risk reduction. Previously, large scale pages were unwieldy and time consuming to manage whereas with Conversocial, Facebook has become a more robust and scalable marketing platform.
The benefits of a centralised moderation queue, additional insight and enhanced engagement features mixed with a genuinely responsive development team mean I’m more than happy to recommend Conversocial.”
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Conversocial is a Social Media Management System that helps businesses manage the increasing volume of two-way communication going through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Through in-depth engagement analytics and comprehensive comment management tools, Conversocial enables effective marketing distribution, moderation and customer support.
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