Customer Service support in the year 2011

Customer service taking place in the magical world of the Internet takes many forms and shapes. Anything from FAQs, discussion forums, live chats with the company representatives and utilising social medias like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are being used in different ways. Best-practise guides and blogs more professional than this one all emphasise the importance of customer engagement and listening what they have to say.This all sounds nice but how is it done in practice? How have some the best in the industry manage to sort this out? In this first posting on customer service I examine how Marks and Spencers is doing it on their Facebook page and what the whole "My Starbucks Idea" website is all about. 

M&S Facebook page:

Facebook Wall postings should be abut two-way communication and not just posting sales offers by the company. At M&S the staff is answering people’s questions about different M&S services and product availability as well as their features. They’re also providing tips related to different occasions like St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Pancake day, which are naturally more or less related to M&S products but still useful tips.

The newsletter provides a condensed, one page view of the latest offers, new products and tips / offers related to special occasions (Pancake day).

The M&S Discussion board has a very active presence by the M&S social media staff that are actively participating in the discussions and offering advice to consumers, who have had problems with deliveries and with different M&S products. The staff comes across in a very neutral way. They’re not advocating for M&S but have almost a role of a mediator between consumers and M&S. In one discussion they even advised a person to look for a dinner set from their competitors as M&S had discontinued the sales of the product.

They’re also continuing to convey this idea of “helping out people” with their Prostate Cancer Awareness Month boxers, that were designed by famous designers to increase awareness of the issue with proceeds going towards cancer research. It provides consumers with useful information, opportunity to help out and increase the positive brand image of M&S.

My Starbucks Idea:

This site takes the customer discussion about Starbucks away from Starbuck's homepage and Facebook page, and gives fans of Starbucks a platform meant specifically to gather all their ideas and suggestions. It's the ultimate step in gathering feedback by a company and can by no means succeed without a large and active fan base. 

The site gives consumers the opportunity to submit their own ideas about Starbucks products and ways they could improve their service. Customers have the opportunity to share their idea with other users, have them vote on the ideas and finally see the ideas in action once Starbucks has implemented them. The site has become a total customer feedback driver for the company with active users posting new ideas and discussing the company on the site, providing Starbucks with invaluable feedback. The site has also a leaderboard scoring users based on the number of ideas, comments and votes submitted. This is to further incentivize the users to actively comment and participate on the site.

Starbucks has managed to create a “small” online community dedicated to improve pretty much everything Starbucks does. They're utilizing the active follower group they have without giving them anything more than credit for the ideas they come up with. Despite only getting a “virtual handshake” for their ideas the site has a very active community with new ideas being submitted round the clock. The latest ideas are displayed on the front page with some of the ideas actually implemented just below them. The site is a great example of utilizing consumer power and willingness to participate.

My Starbucks Idea takes eCRM to the next step of engagement and activity. The site isn’t trying to seem like a compromise between products and ways people can use them (like M&S Facebook page), but its just a site purely for improving Starbucks. The site is simple and provides an easy medium for people to engage with the company. Even though this might be hard to replicate by other companies, it still shows something to strive for.