Social Media a Venting Ground for Customer Frustration

Exclusive new research on the customer experience by customer relationship management experts Convergys sheds new light on the importance of effectively managing social media channels.

Survey findings reveal that a staggering 76% of respondents who heard about a bad customer experience via social media intentionally stopped doing business with or avoided doing business with the offending company.

The survey also reveals that 83% of customers that had a bad experience with an organisation told friends or colleagues.

David Lopes, Director of Technology and Business Development, Convergys, said:

"Advancements in internet services mean we now live in an era of instant results and personalised attention. Although consumers aren't willing to pay extra for customer service, they are more empowered than ever to complain. And consumers' increasing affinity with social media means new emerging communications channels are likely to be the hottest venting ground for impatient customers irritated by a lack of resolution from a given company."

The 2011 findings of its annual 'Customer Service Scorecard' show that of the 83% of consumer respondents who said they told friends or colleagues of a bad experience, 16 percent used social media and 8 percent used texting.

This has powerful viral implications for organisations, particularly when you consider that the average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Companies will also be alarmed by evidence of the growing influence that reading about negative customer experiences online has on customer behaviour. Fuelled in part by the growing popularity of online review sites and wikis, as well as more traditional forms of social media, 35% of customer survey respondents said they had read about a bad customer experience during the last six months on a social media channel.

David Lopes continued:

"There's a lot of talk about the impact of social media on customer service - much of it anecdotal. The 35% figure provides tangible evidence of the very real need for companies to improve customer service technology for a social media age, as well as develop policies to monitor and respond to complaints using social media channels. With the right strategic approach, having this level of enhanced customer insight across social media channels can be a powerful revenue generator."

Convergys offers companies a social interaction solution that is able to extract the most important information from thousands of social mentions by using its real-time decisioning engine to mine the text of social interactions.

The solution can enhance listening, accurately identify key influencers and sentiment, prioritise and filter out the "noise" of social mentions, and route important mentions to the appropriate department or agent best equipped to address each issue.

With Convergys' social interaction solution, clients are able to handle a growing volume of social interactions, increase net promoter score, enable early warning detection, and better meet service level agreements on forum replies.

More details from the Convergys research will be reviewed in depth at Convergys' upcoming 'Be Bold: Evolve Your Customer Interactions' conference taking place at Urban Golf Smithfield on 22nd September, 2011.

About Convergys

Convergys Corporation is a global leader in relationship management. Providing solutions that drive more value from the relationships clients have with their customers, the company has approximately 70,000 employees in 68 customer contact centers and other facilities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Info: www.convergys.com.

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