Research paper examining how companies are responding to the challenge of implementing social customer experience. Based on in-depth interviews and workshops with companies at different stages of social customer care adoption it provides ten practical steps to help you improve your own social customer care.

1. Ten steps to social customer experience
success
A report from the frontline
March 2012

2. Ten steps to social customer experience success –
a report from the frontline:
Introduction
Social has changed the way we experience brands. We no longer measure brands primarily
on messages, but on the interactions we have with them, and what others tell us about the
interactions they have with them.
It is the growth in the use of social technologies that has enabled this more social behaviour
– greater connectivity brings customers closer to brands, and enables amplification of
individual customer experiences into the wider consciousness.
This piece of research has been designed to discover how those on the frontline, customer
service teams, are responding to these changes, and finding opportunities to enhance
customer experience.
Headstream’s point of view
Within the wider experience a customer has we believe it is the customer service team that
is now the single most important voice of the brand. These teams are dealing with
customers at a point of heightened need, and when they have the highest expectations of
what the company should deliver.
Companies that have successfully adopted social practices within their overall customer
experience understand that delivering the brand promise can be done extremely effectively
on social platforms. Those that have ignored the opportunity to use social platforms to
enhance the customer experience are ignoring a significant threat to their brand, and
spurning an opportunity to get closer to customers.
To quote Philip Sheldrake, author of ‘The Business of Influence’ –
“The phrase ’perception is reality’ may have been a relevant axiom for 20th Century
marketing and PR practices, but now reality is perception”.
Page 2 of 10

3. Learning from the marketplace
So what should brands be doing to take advantage of this opportunity? We see ten core
behaviours that allow brands to take advantage of social to enhance the overall customer
experience.
Currently the majority of these are in the ‘high stakes’ area of customer service and
complaint resolution. However, as the marketplace evolves, the benefits of proactive
outreach to all customers via social, not just those that have a specific problem, becomes
clear.
To explore this in more detail Headstream conducted a series of interviews, and workshops
with three different companies that are in different marketplaces, and at different stages
when it comes to social customer service adoption. These companies were selected for their
diversity, and because they represent a range of B2C, B2B and B2B intermediated industries.
They are:
British Telecom’s social customer care team @BTCare that handles retail customers
throughout the UK,
Skandia UK’s customer care team handling financial intermediaries (IFAs) accessing
Skandia’s investment fund platform, and,
Jobsite’s customer care team handling consumers (B2C), and recruitment agencies (B2B),
using the Jobsite.co.uk job board.
Our intention was not to judge how these companies are performing, but to take an in depth
look at the internal structures, behaviours, technologies and processes that either help or
hinder them in delivering this social element of customer experience.
We spoke to the teams on the frontline, and their managers, keen to get a true picture of
what it’s like to design and deliver customer experience at the real-time speed social
demands. We also sought practical examples of how to embed social into the delivery of
customer experience, where you should start, and what you should measure.
Finally, we were keen to discover how these teams now view themselves in relation to the
brand they represent. Has social made them more aware of their role as brand advocates,
and influencers? Ultimately, is there an argument that the customer service teams should
lead all social activity at a company?
Page 3 of 10

4. Ten steps to social customer experience success – the overview
1. Good social CRM starts with good traditional CRM:
Good social CRM is built on the foundation of successful traditional CRM. You can’t
expect poor CRM to be improved by adding social; in fact it will make it worse.
2. Customers give more, so they expect more:
Customers now expect equitable, real-time relationships with brands. The best
brands are building a proactive community, not just reacting to service issues, and
are starting, rather than simply joining conversations.
3. Empathy skills are crucial:
In an era of visible consumption, advocacy and satisfaction, the best CRM operatives
build rapport and understanding on an appropriate level. This empathy in a CRM
representative may be more inherent than something that can be taught. Treat
customers as you would like to be treated yourself.
4. Everyone is a brand manager:
CRM teams see themselves as brand advocates – universally. CRM teams want
ownership, or joint ownership with brand teams.
5. On message, but not scripted:
Authentic communication requires high performing team members. Every contact is
a branding opportunity (even if it’s a wrong number provide the very best
impression you can!). Social CRM operatives need to have broad knowledge of a
company’s products and services, and also an appreciation of the sensitive
commercial/PR issues they need to manoeuvre around.
6. Real time engagement:
Time with the customer, means time with your brand, so set up your CRM around
their needs and timetables, not yours. Customer’s expectations have changed
around speed of response, they are also more ‘savvy’ about their rights, and the
effect their complaint could have in social spaces.
7. A problem shared is a problem halved:
Enable self-help amongst the community through appropriate technology and
community management. Companies are poor at using the customer feedback
front-line CRM teams receive to improve product, brand or service.
8. The measurement challenge and opportunity:
Traditional CRM metrics are internally focused, e.g. volume of enquiries handled by
each representative in a defined time period. These measurements can be counter
productive to creating good social CRM conditions. Instead social CRM requires a
focus on measuring customer satisfaction or NPS (Net Promoter Score), with an
emphasis on timely feedback.
Page 4 of 10

5. 9. Common barriers that need to be overcome:
Common barriers are: the fear of being opened up to scrutiny, requirement to
service out of hours, requirement for improved co-ordination between departments,
the challenge of integrating socially enabled technologies with legacy CRM systems,
and the ability to listen to online conversation.
10. Proving the financial benefit:
How can organisations move from measuring the cost of the service, to the value in
the relationship? Changing the way long-term engagement with customers is valued
within organisations is the core challenge.
Ten steps to social customer experience success – the detail
The ten steps above have been distilled from the interviews and written contributions from
our partner companies in this research. Below are some of the key quotes they provided in
reference to each point:
1. Good social CRM starts with good traditional CRM
“If you work for a brand that’s proud of itself, there is an element of pride in everything you
do.”
“The basics of good customer service are still relevant.”
2. Customers give more, so they expect more
“You have to take on and own the specific query or complaint, you need to own and process
it end to end. Social CRM team members need to be showing every action at every stage
because it’s a public forum. It’s all about the relationship (with the customer), and everyone
can see how it’s going.”
“If you turn a customer around they will never leave you. You’ve resolved and turned them
through an awful situation. It makes the customer feel loved.”
“At the moment, the SM customer service group is small – the challenge will be to grow but
keep consistency.”
“If we can pick up general mentions, we will reach out and help – there is the opportunity to
delight and surprise them by contacting direct. The customer instantly feels like someone
wants to help them.”
“Next it’s about building community, not using social just as a service portal. We want to
retain people and engage them longer term, at the moment once the problems have been
solved they just tend to go away.”
“People remember when they’ve had exceptional service. The impact you will have on that
individual, they will tell other people – like a ripple effect. You should treat each customer as
Page 5 of 10

6. if they are a well connected client, you don’t know who their contacts are, but you should
assume this so you always give the best possible service.”
“Expectations have changed, people are much more aware of what they are entitled to, and
the media are so damning when something goes wrong.”
3. Empathy skills are crucial
“You’ve got to put yourselves in the customer’s shoes and their environment. You have to be
genuine and considered in any response, looking after your own agenda isn’t going to work,
you have to think about the consumer. It’s nothing to do with social media, it’s all about
attitude.”
“Once you start a conversation in an open forum, you know other people are seeing it, that
requires a lot more thinking. The tone has to be right, it’s a balance between being friendly
and professional. It’s a skill to be learnt, and it can take time to get advisers up to speed.”
“It helps to have a certain sense of empathy, to be able to put yourself into their (the
customer’s) shoes. Good listening skills, the ability to use the right language, and the ability
to stay calm.”
“It’s important for an individual to understand the customer, to get a feeling of the customer.
A person in customer service needs to be intuitive, and you have to be that type of person,
I’m not sure if you can train people to be like that.”
“Treat customers as you’d expect to be treated yourself.”
4. Everyone is a brand manager
“There can be tension between marketing, sales and customer service teams. It [social
customer service] does cross over with branding and product development, but it ultimately
needs to be lead by customer service teams.”
“Customer service has more opportunity to develop the brand and what it means than any
other part of the business.”
“Customers are our business, so we need to make sure they’re happy with the service we
provide. Everything we do impacts the customers perception of the brand.“
“Our brand stands out, it is the number one in the country at what it does. We have to live up
to that in everything we do, and provide the best possible service to everyone, even if it’s a
wrong number!”
“We are the first people the customer speaks to, so yes, we would be good people to lead
social.”
“If you are in customer service you are a brand advocate.”
Page 6 of 10

7. 5. On message, but not scripted
“Usually, the (social CRM) team can answer any questions, there are contacts so they can
check specific issues. We have developed a matrix of contacts across company can go to with
a quick and honest answer.”
“It’s nice to follow complaint through to resolution, it’s better than working in a standard
customer service team where you specialise in one narrow area. It gives a better overview of
company, and we’re trained in many lines of business. With social you get to see everything.”
6. Real time engagement
“Customers are more clued up, they expect much more and know much more about what
happens. People know more about how things work, they are more knowledgable.”
“Yes it has changed. It’s all about response time. When I started, it could be over 24 hours
before responding, now its about 4 hours. Customers want a fast response and resolution.”
“People’s expectations re timescales have changed, they expect to know the information
there and then.”
“Customers are a lot more savvy with how to deal with customer service departments. With
social media they are more likely to get their thoughts out there.”
7. A problem shared is a problem halved
“Only if a brand does something wrong, can you show how good your customer service is.
Generally speaking, customers are satisfied, but only when they have an issue do they
become a real brand advocate.”
“ We take learning’s from customers to help improve products. Take feedback, log it on a
spreadsheet and put it towards relevant department, and see if fixes can be made. E.g.
website enhancements, recent complaint re lots of paperwork, so documents have been
posted online thru an extranet login”
“Striving for customer satisfaction is key. If you can provide enough satisfaction then the
medium is there now for word to be spread.”
8. The measurement challenge and opportunity
“We have a productivity sheet monitoring timings and processing, we don’t really measure
customer satisfaction.”
“There are numerous reports run by our manager. This looks at the number of enquiries dealt
with via email or phone. We don’t measure customer satisfaction”
“You need to measure three things; individual advisor performance, team performance and
public satisfaction.“
Page 7 of 10

8. ”We are looking for 80 pct of our customer surveys to come back with ‘very satisfied’ or
‘extremely satisfied’ with the way the issue was handled. This is a high benchmark but it’s
what is required to get a positive Net Promoter Score.”
“We’re service driven, not sales driven, its about reputation and retention.”
9. Common barriers that need to be overcome
“Insights don’t feed into CRM, it’s a very manual process. In order to truly invest, we will need
huge investment to integrate everything – traditional legacy CRM systems are hard to
integrate.”
“To achieve change is about culture change. Business change has to be driven by the top
down. The MD and CEO have championed the cause, they love it but there’s more than just
loving it – social needs incorporating into entire business strategy. Middle managers
sometimes cause barriers, don’t understand or care for social media.”
“Internal IT systems need to talk to each other and work better together. Integration into one
system would make life easier for example you can’t yet search for a Twitter ID, doesn’t link
into main database.”
“It’s important to have key contacts in other parts of the company you can call upon and find
out any information you need. I had barriers at the start to find relevant people to deal with
the query, but have overcome this. You need a mini social network internally too.”
“We have a good intranet for knowledge sharing and informing different teams of latest
developments. This is especially helpful when answering questions on the phone for clients.”
“The wider social sphere watching every conversation is something that is an opportunity
and a threat and needs to be recognised and managed effectively.”
10. Proving the financial benefit
“The ultimate reward is to cut the cost of customer loyalty. True value is seeing angry
customers at the point of leaving, and seeing them turn around. Social customers are prone
to complaining, they are used to that culture of complaining.”
It (ROI) is looked at with head count (cost of people) and type of query. We can map against
what the cost would have been if query dealt with by email or phone. It (social) is a lot
cheaper than other channels.“
“We’re at the point where we HAVE to change across the complete business. We are being
forced by our customers.”
Summary
Page 8 of 10

9. Committing to social starts with a clear intention to change the relationship with the
customer. It means being multi-dimensional and meeting customers’ needs faster. It
requires both the embedding of processes that recognise the value of conversation, and
the enabling of people to act for the brand. The true measure of brand engagement is in
the exchange of trust and goodwill between two people. People helping people solve
problems.
Page 9 of 10

10. Acknowledgments
We would like to extend a big thank-you to the companies who kindly took part in this
research, and in particular to the individuals who made their teams available to us for
interviewing and workshops. They are:
Bian Salins, Head of Social Media Innovation, BT Customer Service
Anne-Marie Rex, Customer Service Manager, Jobsite
Jeremy Mugridge, Head of Digital Marketing, Skandia
Headstream team:
Julius Duncan – julius.duncan@headstream.com
Elizabeth Flynn – elizabeth.flynn@headstream.com
Samuel Hilary – samuel.hilary@headstream.com
About Headstream
Headstream is a specialist social agency that helps organisations embed social into their
marketing communications. We believe social creates significant opportunities to enhance
business results by bringing organisations closer to their customers and stakeholders.
For more information about Headstream’s services please contact:
Andrea Catt – andrea.catt@headstream.com
+44 (0)23 8082 8520
Page 10 of 10