What are customer expectations for engagement?

• Author: Kincy, Jason
• Position: SOCIAL MEDIA

MANY OF US WHO WORK IN MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA are observing that customers are reaching out more often to their bank through social media--looking for assistance, asking a question or providing feedback. As banks work to identify their methodology to handle and respond to these customer contacts in social media, an important question to consider: What do customers want and expect from their institution?

My bank is focused on studying what drives customer satisfaction, and was very interested in some recent findings shared by J.D. Power and Associates related to social media. The findings come from the company's 2012 special report, Understanding the Impact of Social Media on Companies. The impact of social engagement on satisfaction is something J.D. Power has just begun to study, and it has identified seven KPIs (key performance indicators) that impact overall customer satisfaction:

* Someone responded in less than 7 hours. Likely the most difficult KPI for local and regional banks to meet, virtually requiring a 24/7 contact center. My view is to provide coverage that matches your branch hours and contact center hours.

* Responded via the same channel, phone or mail. How you engage the customer may be driven by your social media customer service strategy. The bottom line here is that we should respond quickly and initiate resolution through a channel that matches the customer's initial contact point if possible.

* Representative offered to assist you with another problem. As with an in-person service situation, it's important to ask the customer if there are any other needs.

* Representative thanked you for your business. Seems like an obvious one, but sometimes the simple things can matter most. Be sure to thank the customer for his or her business and for reaching out to the bank.

* Representative offered to sell you other products. In my view this could be very difficult to do if communicating solely through social channels. If the initial social contact is moved to a telephone contact, this becomes much easier to execute.

* The issue was resolved...