Five Key Social Media Trends for 2022 – Part Five

By: Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect

In this five-part series, we are taking a look at the 2022 social trends from Hootsuite. The final macro trend for 2022 is the customer care trend.

The Customer Care Trend

Social marketers rescue their brands from the customer service apocalypse

Spurred on by lockdowns and chaotic shifts in business operations, we’ve seen social marketers take on more responsibility for managing an influx of customer service inquiries.

Social has become the front line of this crisis

Consumers, fed up with waiting on hold, have discovered that service delivered via social is immediate, convenient, and effective. In a Nielsen survey commissioned by Facebook, 64% of people said they now prefer to message rather than call a business. The pressure on businesses to adapt to as many digital customer service channels as possible is sky high.

According to Gartner, 60% of all customer service requests will be managed via digital channels by 2023. Consumer expectations are mounting. Demand for integrating customer care channels is increasing—and social is where that pressure is peaking.

Most organizations are not ready to deliver customer care on social.

Despite a rise in demand, many organizations aren’t well positioned to deliver effective customer care over social media…at least not yet. Our internal data from research conducted in July 2021 tells us that 71% of organizations have either not started investing in social customer care yet, or they don’t plan to invest in it at all.

In 2022, business leaders will look to social marketers to take a greater role in customer care. Pioneering social marketers will break from their departmental silos to build deeper inroads with customer service teams and take more agency in delivering customer care.

What do you think about these five trends and where does Social Media rank in your marketing priorities for 2022?

 

Did you miss one of the first four trends?

Five Key Social Media Trends for 2022 – Part One

Five Key Social Media Trends for 2022 – Part Two

Five Key Social Media Trends for 2022 – Part Three

Five Key Social Media Trends for 2022 – Part Four

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Manufacturers: Why Customer Service Is So Important In Serving the Tradesman

By Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect, Sonnhalter

We’ve talked much over the years about customer service and how important it is to resolve issues. And, we’ve also addressed the issue that customer service is everyone’s responsibility, from sales through tech support. Customer service is really all about your customers’ total experience.

This is true in our relationships with distributors as well as contractors. Manufacturers need to be careful, especially when business is on the uptick and attention to detail may come in second to short-term sales increases.

Don’t take your distributor and tradesman for granted. There’s always someone out there that can identify contractor’s needs and deliver—and it won’t necessarily be based on price or delivery—but on the total customer experience.

This article in HVACR Business by Jim Baston stressed, once again, how important customer service is in the big picture. Jim’s article is focused on the HVACR service business, but his points can be transferred to the manufacturing sector as well.

Jim breaks it down into five dimensions of service:

  • Reliability: Your ability to dependably and accurately deliver as promised.
  • Assurance: Your ability to convey trust and confidence.
  • Tangibles: Your personal presentation and the condition of the physical facilities and equipment.
  • Empathy: Your ability to demonstrate a high degree of caring and individual attention.
  • Responsiveness: Your willingness to promptly and courteously respond to customers’ needs.

As manufacturers, you need to understand your customers’ (distributors and contractors) needs. Remember that everyone in your company is in customer service. If you haven’t asked your customers what their needs are recently, maybe you should. Things change and their priorities might have too. Focus on what matters to them.

If you like this post you may want read:

Manufacturers: Are you keeping up with your customers expectations?

Customer Service: What Are You Doing to Retain Customers?

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Is Selling to Professional Tradesmen Getting Easier?

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman

 

I don’t know if it’s getting easier, but it sure is different from years ago. Twenty to 30 years ago, salesmen needed to make cold calls, and the only way to communicate was through land lines, faxes, letters and direct mail. The selling cycle certainly took longer back then!

Now, with the internet, cell phones, email and social media, much of the upfront work is already done for sales. YouTube videos, application data sheets and competitive comparisons are just a few of the resources available.

The key is not to try to sell something; instead, your main objective is to help solve a problem or issue. Here are a few key takeaways when selling to professional tradesmen:

– If possible, actually show you have a solution by demoing your product on an actual job site.

– Sell your value proposition on why using your product will be the reason to choose you over the competition.

– Give them names of other contractors who have similar problems/issues that you helped solve.

– Respect their time; show them your solution and ask when you should follow up.

Here are some tips:

  • Deliver outstanding quality – from a great quality product to courteous customer service and user-friendly info – and then let them have the option on how they want to receive it.
  • Understand what your customers want – don’t assume to know what they want – ask them.
  • Connect with them – direct relationships are the most important and the most challenging. Always think WIIFT (What’s In It For Them). Be sincere and upfront with them. When communicating with them, don’t always be selling. Try to help solve a problem even though it might not, in the short term, result in a sale.
  • Under promise and over deliver – exceed your customers’ expectations, then do it again.
  • Don’t sit on your laurels – yes, you have real neat products, but instead of sitting there and just doing the same old, same old, innovate. If you don’t, someone else will.

 

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8 Tips for Making Customer Service a Priority in your Marketing

Think customer service isn’t an integral part of your marketing? Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What part of your company do existing customers deal with the most?
  • Have you ever avoided a business because of a negative remark a friend made?

If the answer to both is yes, you’ve just seen how an effective customer service program is also your best marketing strategy.

 

 

Need more proof? In our latest Tip Sheet, we’ve laid out eight tips for making customer service a priority in your marketing efforts, and as always, it’s geared toward manufacturers, distributors and others in the B2T marketplace. You can sign up to download it for free here.

Let us know what challenges you’ve had with customer service and check out our other tip sheets here.

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Customer Service for Customer Retention & Value

Today we have a guest post from Russ Hill, Founder of Ultimate Lead Systems.

Customer Service

I recently lunched with some long-time friends and sales and marketing professionals. The topic turned to the importance of Customer Service in the face of the plethora of CRM and Marketing Automation software available today. The conversation raised more questions than it answered.

We agreed on the following definitions for the purpose of the discussion:

Customer Service – The interaction with a customer or prospect that traditionally revolves around resolving a problem and producing a positive outcome. This could be in person or via phone or email.

CRM – It’s not software but a strategic process designed to cultivate and enhance the relationship with customers. The goal is to maximize retention rates and capitalize on the life-time value of the customer.

Something else we agreed upon was that companies seem to be racing to dramatically reduce their costs of engaging customers. Those costs are typically associated with people on payroll, and management too often views automated systems as a means of delivering customer engagement AND customer service at reduced cost. We also agreed that Customer Service is all about NOW and all other engagements are about future opportunities.

We’ve all experienced agonizingly long waits in Customer Service phone queues that assure us our “call is important” only to get transferred to a voicemail box that is full and not taking messages. Programs like Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua and Exact Target can help deliver content that may be of value to customers they already know. What about new customer and prospects? Websites without phone numbers that force the customer to do all of the work to find solutions to their own needs do not make it easy for customers to buy or remain customers. How many take their business elsewhere because Customer Service is self-serve or non-existent…and the vendor neither knows nor cares?

Dimensional Research found that Customer Service was the #1 factor impacting vendor trust, and:

  • 62% of B2B customers purchase more after a good Customer Service experience.
  • 66% of B2B customers stopped buying after a BAD Customer Service experience.
  • 88% of B2B customers were influenced by online customer service reviews when making purchasing decisions.

Customer Service clearly can be the difference between winning, keeping and losing business, and that can mean significant lifetime value won or lost. As for me, we experienced business service from AT&T that has been nothing but a nightmare. I’ll spare you the details, but we will never do business with them again. Does AT&T care? They don’t appear to.We have other vendors who do stellar jobs that we couldn’t live without. I’ll bet you do too.

In the end, we were all able to agree that people have relationships with people, that customers have “experiences” with companies, and that people do business with people they know, like and trust. It begged the question, do your customers have a relationship with you, or just have an “experience” with your company? It makes a difference.

This post originally appeared on the Ultimate Lead blog and is reposted with permission. 

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