New Age for Customer Service

Customer service used to be a private transaction between a business concern and people interested, or those who use a product and/or service. Not anymore! Twitter has created a public stage and businesses are forced to respond and manage their customers’ frustrations in the full glare of the public.

Before now, consumer complaints, issues and frustrations were managed by directing them to emails, customer care lines and support tickets that were either abandoned or overwhelmed with complaints and therefore created more frustrations than solve customer-related problems. With the advent of Twitter and given the real-time nature and users’ craving for immediacy, more and more people are turning to it as their number one channel for expressing their opinions.

A study conducted by American Express in 2012 shows that social media savvy consumers are more valuable customers and wield the greatest amount of influence.   According to the study, customers tell significantly more people about their service experiences, and say they’d spend 21% more with companies who deliver great service – compared to 13% on average. Twitter has become the platform on which they share their thoughts with their personal networks and that has a huge effect on both the perception of others and their purchasing decisions.

Twitter definitely has become important platform where people and brands connect and it is not just about marketing and advertising of product or business – customer service takes place too. In an article for the Observers (2012), Lisa Bachelor noted that Twitter has become so widely used for airing grievances that companies open twitter accounts specifically to deal with customer feedback, separate from their general public-facing accounts.

Information people can gather about an organization or business outside its control is gradually becoming its customer’s reality. Whether they believe it or not people are talking about their business online and those who read it are taking it as fact. Any business that approaches online and Twitter marketing like the traditional advertising channel where communication is one-way is missing a huge opportunity.

Traditional customer support channels tilted the balance of power to the company not the customer. Customers can call, chat, email, send text messages; if the company wanted to avoid them, it was simple. In fact, the contents of the conversation, the concerns of the buyer and the implications of the poor product or service quality were quietly hidden from public glare. Twitter is changing that by creating a public platform of engagement. It has become a dream come true for consumers. Once they see those traditional channels are not working, they turn to twitter.  

   Expressing their opinions about business on twitter is now common place. This touch point is different. It was owned by consumers; they can tell the whole world about their frustrations especially when emails, 1-800number, and other existing channels are not delivering on brand promise.

Today’s consumers have become more complex; difficult to reach and a lot more informed and sophisticated. Twitter has given them the tools and resources to research about any product, look for people who have used the products, seek reviews etc. It has also allowed people to build communities and can rally round each other to organize attacks against brands they don’t like or are dissatisfied with their goods or services. On the other hand, they also have opportunities to garner recommendations, likes and followers for the business. It is then easier to garner positive reviews and favorable perception about the product.

Businesses spend a lot of money in developing communication channels to make it easy for customers to reach them. According to Jon Swartz of USA Today, Twitter has democratized customer service by collapsing all barriers between a brand and its customers and has thrown up tremendous opportunities for deepening the brand experience.

As Twitter continues to power the change in media consumption and communication habits of people and organizations, several organizations created their business profiles to tap into the social communities by marketing their products and services to them. But the social customers have continued to see these social connections of businesses as an opportunity to engage the business on product and services related issues, hence the birth of the use of twitter in customer service.

Some statistics show that today customers are purchasing from businesses that are more likely to answer questions than to those who won’t answer their questions on Twitter.

Addiction: The Dark Side of Social Media

Social media addiction is a phrase sometimes used to refer to someone spending too much time using Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media - so much so that it interferes with other aspects of daily life. There is no official medical recognition of social media addiction as a disease or disorder. Still, it seems cluster of behaviors associated with heavy or excessive use of social media has become the subject of much discussion and research.
           A new report indicates that the prevalence has resulted in a high rate of psychosis or psychopathologies such as addiction and delusions. The study was published in Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences. Psychosis derived from ‘psyche’, refers to an abnormal condition of the mind. It is a psychiatric term generally used to describe a mental state that involves loss of contact with reality. 

The researchers, who are also psychologists, say they found striking evidence that some users have developed a compulsive Internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The findings suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.

In another study, Lead author, Dr. Catriona Morrison says, “Social Media now plays a huge part in modern life, but its benefits are accompanied by a darker side. She states that why many of people use the social media to get news and information and keep up with friends and family, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities.

 The study stipulates that Social Media addicts spent proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying contents, online dating sites and online communities. They also had a higher incidence of moderate to severe depression than non-addicted users. The research also seems to suggest that young people are more likely to be Social Media addicted than middle-aged users, with the average age of the addicted group standing at 21 years.

The study reinforces other research that over-engaging in Social Media sites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction.

Assistant Professor, Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and colleagues in a research presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology noted that the desires for social media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and because it feels like it does not 'cost much' to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist. He notes that giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still 'steal' a lot of people's time and endanger their mental wellbeing.

They concluded that social media addiction can be stronger than addiction to cigarettes and booze following an experiment in which they recorded the cravings of several hundred people for several weeks. Social Media cravings ranked ahead of cravings for cigarettes and alcohol. The addiction may not be as destructive as alcohol or drugs, but it can be destructive to one’s personal relationships and in professional life if it interferes with the person’s job," noted Kelli Burns, a mass communications professor and social media researcher at university of Southern Florida.

Diana Bocco in one of her online articles argued that Social Media addiction can take many forms and one of the problems when defining Social Media addition is deciding how much time spent on Facebook is normal and when someone has crossed the line into dangerous territory.

 According to Addiction Treatment Magazine, people who are more isolated in the real world are more likely to become addicted to social networking sites. They rely on online friends as substitutes for the relationships they don't have in real life. In all, while social media has been used by some smart chaps to generate income, others have had to pay dearly for their indulgence.