Never Fail to distinguish between your B List customers who should be treated like royalty, and your A List customers, who should be treated like family.

Jay Conrad Levinson, author of ‘Guerilla Marketing’

The debate continues amongst some professionals about whether an organisation’s social media activity should be managed by PR/ marketing or customer service teams. Really it straddles both and if there are two sides they need to work together. But wherever social media responsibility sits in your company it needs to be handled well. Day-to-day interactions with customers matter a great deal and multiple (apparently small) negative experiences can quickly erode hard won brand loyalty and lead to big disasters. Social media can famously quickly turn corporate mishaps and failures into PR catastrophes ruining reputations overnight.

Do it and do it well

Recent statistics show that 60 per cent of companies do not respond to customers via social media, even when asked a direct question. The following three personal experiences highlight some winning and losing customer service activity [Read more...]