Trumblog

Last week I was listening to a webcast and the presenter talked about his experience when their webcast system went down.  He tweeted that he was having issues with the service and then within a few minutes a support person from the webcasting company DM’ed him on Twitter to help troubleshoot the issue.  Great customer service.  But there is a dark side to this social media customer support encounter that you may only recognize if you have children in your home.

I have a two kids, one a teen and the other doing her best to make me think that she is one.  It is not uncommon for either of them to say “I’m hungry” or “I’m cold.” Sort of a verbal tweet.  Now as one of the  customer support people in the house I often engage them after these aural status updates. “What would you like to eat?” If you have teens then you know that the answer is “I don’t know” after which I begin my litany of food options.  At some point as a parent you need to stop this and empower your children.  Rather than serve them you need to get them to act on their own.  “I’m hungry” deserves the response “Find yourself something to eat.” “I’m cold” gets “Put on a sweater.”  I have made sure that there is plenty of food around that they like and clothes that they are willing to wear, so the next step is theirs.  I want my kids to address their needs and take care of them themselves.

Helicopter Brands

Some parents don’t get to the next stage of parenting and continue to support their children’s every need, hovering around them to make sure that they are taken care of rather that helping them to become fully functioning, self sufficient people.  These people are known as helicopter parents.

Now before I get any further, understand that I absolutely encourage everyone involved in marketing to monitor social networks.  I monitor what my kids eat, who their friends are, where they are going, what they bring in the house.  I’m not weird about it (that pushes teens away just like it does customers). I am just aware. That way our family can address issues before they get out of control.  As a brand manager you should be doing the same.

Back to the helicopter brands that I was discussing.  Like the dreaded helicopter parents of gen Y, these helicopter brands hover over customers taking care of their immediate customer support needs rather than ensuring that they have given them the tools to be fully functioning consumers.

How do you know if you might be a helicopter brand?

• Are you monitoring Twitter for customer support issues because that is where consumers think that they should go to ask them or is it because you do not provide good instructions?
• Are your customer support people no better than the insufficient instruction that you provide?
• Is the goal of your customer support team to  get a caller off the line rather than ensure that their problem is completely solved?
• Are your repair people  chronically late to appointments and fall asleep on your customer’s couch?

Ask yourself if your social media customer support papering over problems with your customer support in general and if addressing issues like these will empower your customers to resolve their own issues and use the services already available to them.

Negative SEO And The Helicopter Brand

Not only do good customer service channels empower customers to resolve their own needs they also eliminate the whine factor of Twitter.  If you are a parent then you know the non-verbal whine of a 2-4 year old.  In our house we’d say “use your words” in an effort to get the kids to say specifically what they wanted and avoid them becoming my grandmother who would point and grunt at the dining table in order to have the dish that she wanted passed to her.  Are you doing the same through social media, resolving issues for people who complain the most while the majority suffer in silence, but happily jump to your competitor when given the option?  If so you are training your customers to tweet their problems, encouraging a whiny, complaining tweet stream and blogosphere and promoting the creation of bad search results for your brand.

Remember the SEO benefits of Twitter and blogging? The street goes both ways and those “Acme Brand’s widget isn’t working” tweets and blog posts that you are encouraging will become a chorus of dissatisfied customer tweets that will live online forever.  You should be monitoring the blogosphere and Tweetstream for the most common issues then create positive SEO through video tutorials, FAQs and well produced instructions with plenty of images. Build awareness of these tools through Twitter and reduce the complainosphere.  For example, one of my most popular posts on this blog is how to set up your Go Daddy email address on Gmail.  If Go Daddy had that information on their site they would be collecting that traffic and SEO benefit not me and possibly reducing their customer support issues.

The point is that like parents, brands need to look out for the people who look up to them, but being reactive doesn’t result in good kids or good customers.  It may give you short term benefit and praise, but really it’s listening to them and then giving them the tools that they need to succeed that earns you their love and respect.

Photo credit: matthewbradley