Panel discussion at #WeKonnect 2023 on Reinventing Customer Centricity
Panelists:
Ashish Tewari, AVP Digital Marketing, Lodha
Bhavini Bangera, AVP Marketing & Communications, SBI Securities
Darshan Pavate, Country Lead - Social Listening & ORM, Decathlon
Prateek Desai, Director of Customer Service, Zepto
Moderated by Prateek Vora, Associate Director, Games247
This was an interesting discussion on what constitutes customer centricity in the context of social listening. How do brands translate customer centricity into tangible outcomes? What takes precedence, the right mindset or toolset? Building on the importance of agent experience, how does investing in the well-being and satisfaction of customer facing teams lead into delightful experiences for customers?
I'm not going to transcribe the entire discussion, the video is up there if you want to listen through. However, I do intend to outline a key perspective on understanding the context of social listening.
The guy who has had to resort to social media to voice a complaint, is mentally in the same space as a disgruntled customer standing on the road outside your office, screaming at the building.
i.e. - he's here as a last resort, frustrated, unhappy with previous interactions in a more formal, private situation. He's upset, and he wants the world to know.
At this point, it's very important that you engage, with speed and compassion.
Because if you don't, then a crowd will gather. Random people will offer random advice. Someone will call the media, someone else the cops. Lawyers will appear. Someone will tweet the chairman of the board and the CEO. The crowd will become a mob, and the situation is now officially out of your control.
Do not let this happen.
Reach out, and it's not necessary to have a solution when you do. Have an approach, a way forward. It's more important to be alerted early when a potentially problematic situation is developing, and nip it in the bud with a clear, articulate fast response that has a way forward towards resolution. The important thing is for the customer to be heard. That's what has failed him in the alternatives so far.
Speed will come if there is a clear escalation matrix, identified personnel with clear responsibilities and SLAs, and available templates and data to work with, instead of scrambling for a first-time resolution, every time. Which means the response team needs to be empowered with this, and the power to make certain decisions. That's the only way to avoid the dreaded "Let me check and get back to you" response, that in this scenario will probably lead to stone-throwing from the street.
Tools or mindset?
Mindset first, because that determines what you want to achieve, which determines your measures of success and KPIs, which decides what tools to use (that can offer these). Tools can inspire evolution of goals and objectives, but knowing what you are going to do, and how, will always hold primacy.
Enabling customer-facing teams?
Empower them with data. Having access to latest case updates, internal commentary, ongoing progress of issues, and even the ability to directly execute actions - eg. mark as 'Do not disturb', create a ticket to the right people, or collect the necessary information for lead creation - can make very significant updates to a team's capability, self-confidence, and ownership, with relatively low incremental resource upgrades. The biggest effort will be a mindset change one, and trust in the team to do their job right. Trust & training does this, not micromanagement, oversight and constraints.
That's the gist; watch the panel session for more inputs & insights, or watch the entire event stredm for the full thing.
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