Utilities should embrace Social Customer Service Now for their Next Generation of Customers

Most big brand fear using social media channels for customer service for the same reasons that customers embrace it.

• It's IMMEDIATE

• It's PERSONAL

• It's ASYCHRONOUS

It's IMMEDIATE - and we mean NOW. #CustomerService has always been as close as picking up your phone and calling a phone number, but social media is as quick as pushing the favorite social app on your phone and speaking a brand name to start posting a customer service issue. Customers can post a question, a comment or a problem as it's happening, which makes most companies, including #utilities very nervous.

Immediate customer service sounds a lot like 24/7 customer care to most companies, which translates to cost and operational challenges for a business used to regular business hours. But customers, especially Millennials and GenZs, will be posting these issues to social media whether utilities respond or not. In many cases, these customers don't expect a public handling of their issue, just an opportunity to use a favored channel like social media to engage with a brand. Utilities can leverage technology to acknowledge a social post, indicate that they will investigate, and invite customers to Direct Message or call for additional service.

It's PERSONAL - customers who favor social media channels for customer service offer utilities a genuine opportunity to engage in an individual and highly personalized manner with the customer, and capture meaningful data to build a lasting relationship. Customers with rich social media activity and accounts generally expect their trusted brands to engage more personally, and utilities can leverage those social services and apps for unique customer insights, if you can use the data. At the very least, you know who you're engaged with, so your customer service team can be more personal in the exchange and use the data from verified accounts to connect more personally without the generic scripts that tend to frustrate customers. Leaning into social media provides a rich ecosystem of customer insights and data for segmentation and personalization that utilities can use to build more engaged relationships.

It's ASYNCHRONOUS - customers appreciate being able to fire of a note on social media in the middle of the night, "getting it off of their chest," then resuming their normal routine expecting to get a notification when their post gets a response. Utilities tend to worry that social posts need an immediate reaction, as if the customer is hanging on their Instagram app looking at your ellipsis waiting for the feedback. In fact, after your customer posted their issue to your social media page, chances are good they scrolled down to look at other posts or swiped to another feed.

The asynchronous nature of social media offers efficiency in the customer service exchange. Utilities can take a moment to check the account without the pressure of lingering hold time or "dead air" while a customer waits on the line. Customer Service agents can organize a case and their response using more efficient process and protocol without the pressure of a live interaction. The response can invite customers to a next action with a direct link to a webform, phone number of specific post that resolves their issue, increasing one-call resolutions and CSAT.

Social customer service is coming whether companies like it or not. GenZ, who's already starting to graduate and get jobs and apartments with the utility bills that come along with those "adulting" stages, depend on social media as their primary channel for digital engagement. And that generation is HUGE. Utilities that embrace social media for customer service will find efficiencies and cost containment in their #CX and #CS programs and develop best practices to lean into this emerging channel. Those companies that don't adapt to #SocialCS will swiftly learn one of the other attributes of social media: It's FOREVER. Don't let your social accounts become a graveyard of orphaned customer comments that damage your brand's social reputation. Lean into social customer service, test the waters with a basic pilot on a single social channel like Facebook (a "starter" channel), and build your team. It pays immediate dividends in cost and operational efficiencies, plus gets your Customer Service programs ready for the next giant cohort of customers to change their interaction with your utility.