BUSINESS NEWS - Have you ever slid into the DMs of service provider like MTN, Capitec, Nedbank or DStv, asking for help with a lost bank card, advise on products and services or help with connectivity problems?
You are not alone. With the demise of the physical yellow pages, and in the age of Google, a significant portion of South African society are resorting to reach out to or contact their service providers via their social media platforms for customer assistance.
Social media transforms relationship between individuals and organisations
The introduction of chatbots who share the likes of Vodacom’s TOBi, Absa’s Abby, Nedbank’s Enbi, and MultiChoice’s T.U.M.I has also seen a massive exodus of customers from the waiting queues on telephonic helplines to online chat platforms that required less wait-time, less airtime and spares one from the dragged-out disclaimers at the beginning of the call (before any options are presented), as well as the annoying, looping adverts and tacky call-waiting music.
But just how helpful are these avenues in terms of customer service and resolving an issue? While brands like Absa and MultiChoice seem to be getting it right, others are receiving a considerable amount of flack for the overly generic and apathetic replies.
Who answers your DMs?
Community managers are the people who respond to your inbox messages on behalf of the organisation you are reaching out to. While most of the time for smaller businesses and brands, they are recruited inhouse and are quite hands-on with operations, a number of bigger brands use agencies to manage the responses on their social media pages.
These community managers are human responders unlike the Chatbots and respond according to the rules laid out for them in the brand’s social media playbook.
More often than not, smaller queries are effectively resolved on the platform, and this has truly saved customers a lot of time and money from having to physically call in or go into the store. One could say, it is community managers themselves who have ushered in this new era of conveniences.
As such, the value provided by community management on social media pages cannot be disputed.
Getting through the pile
But sometimes, because of the large volume of enquiries a brand gets online, limited time to respond and pressure to respond to all enquiries on time, responses tend to come off as a bit too generic, and without a physical person in front of the responder, customers of major brands have complained about a sense of apathy, with no accountability and a less personal experienced is received, with many queries going unresolved.
According to a 2022 Consumer Research report conducted by BPO provider, Merchants, banking clients found automated, often meaningless, responses to be one of their biggest frustrations when it comes to banking.
While 93% of respondents highlighted digital channels as their preferred method of banking, when it came to problem solving or customer service, these same people wanted to speak to another person. An actual person with knowledge of the bank’s operations.
That response is quite telling of the quality of customer service being received on online platforms. We decided to test these platforms in a digital experiment to see just how well social media channels fair in handling queries in the face of new-age customer care.
The experiment outline
The industry: Banking
The scenario: I would pose as a working-class South African in the average income bracket looking to change banks to get a new personal account. My salary after deductions is around R15 000 per month. I actively use card for their transactions so the account is current and I do not need a savings. What can this bank offer me?
The brands: The big four namley Absa ,FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank.
The contenders: Social media channel managers
The platforms and method of enquiry: Facebook and Twitter inboxing
Criteria for point system: Response time (Did I wait for more than an hour for a response?), Relevance of response (Did they understand my question?), Usefulness (Can I take back the information given and make a decision based on it?) and the personalised experience (Did I feel of value as a customer to them?). Each point will be rated out of 10 with 10 being excellent service and 1 being unacceptable service.
