First of all, thanks for each and every one of the e-mails congratulating us for our role in our client’s winning numerous awards at the Sockies17. Following the request of several business owners and in-house marketing departments, James has put pen to paper (ok, finger to keyboard) and has created this case study.
We aim to illustrate what we do on a daily basis to support our clients’ in-house team while monitoring social networks and supporting customers through social media. For confidential purposes, we have removed references to our client (we will refer as ‘our retail client’).
Clients Overview:
Our services for our retail client have expanded over the years. In 2014 they started using our telephone answering service, in 2015 e-mail handling was added, in 2016 social media monitoring was added to their omnichannel customer support strategy.
Arema Connect handles customer queries regarding:
- Sales queries
- Delivery queries
- Product quality Issues
- Trading/Pricing
- Product information queries
- General queries on the company and point of sale support
- In store issues
- Positive feedback
- Press/TV queries
- Job queries
- Competition queries
- Rewards card & voucher queries
- Stock queries
- App queries
- Sponsorship requests
- Marketing
- Product labelling
Social Media Monitoring and Customer Support
Contract Description
Arema Connect has been offering social media monitoring for our clients since 2012. Thankfully we have a very strong relationship with them and when they needed a short-term solution to Social Media Monitoring, we were recommended by another department head. Training was limited as we were familiar with the query types from telephone & email support. It was just a matter of assigning the right people to the project. What started out as a short term 3 month contract has now become a long-term project. They have even extended our hours to include weekends and evening.
We carefully selected a dedicated team of agents who initially met with the marketing team at our clients’ headquarters to firstly discuss building brand affinity, KPIs, engagement rates and their core values. Arema Connect manages all incoming Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts. Our team has broad experience using these social media platforms and other analytical tools. Our client chosen platform was SocialBakers.
Our retail client required support 7 days a week. Each post had to be responded to within 30 minutes. Our job description was:
- Sharing/ReTweeting posts made by advocates of the brand
- Responding to customers in a professional and friendly way
- Responding to positive comments as well as complaints/queries
- Escalating issues to our client dedicated points of contact
- Requesting additional customer information
- Handling fluctuating busy periods when a new campaign or competition is running
- Labelling Tweets and Facebook comments
Weekly reports are provided to our retail client detailing sentiment analysis parameters and actions taken.
Activities
Our day to day activities can be divided into three broad categories: positive engagement, complaints & queries, and reporting.
Responding to Complaints & Queries in Social Media:
When we receive a complaint or query over social media we will first generate a personalised acknowledgement of the message based on its seriousness, urgency and type of query. Then the customer is asked to send us a private message (PM) with their contact details and any other info required such as the store name, etc.
This PM is then escalated via email to the appropriate department. Our client’s contact point reviews the complaint and advises us if further follow-up is required. Otherwise, our clients contact directly the customer and find a suitable resolution outside social media channels.
Reacting to Social Media Positive Engagement:
At Arema Connect we understand that responding to positive comments is vitally important. When a customer post shares a positive image of the brand, a dedicated agent will engage the customer in a positive and friendly manner.
Another example of positive engagement is when our client decides to run a new campaign or need our team to engage with a list of specific brand affiliates/companies for a certain time period. In 2017 our key account manager met with our client’s Digital Content Specialist Rewards department. This was to prepare for a 3 week campaign which included video posts and competitions. It was rightly expected an increase of queries and positive engagement. Our objective was to promote certain aspects of the campaign such as promotions and the launch of an app, engage with all posts and monitor for new trends that were developing.
Social Media Reporting:
Arema Connect uses the SocialBakers platform for this client. This social media analytics application houses a labelling tool, this allows us to tally up an in-depth weekly report for our client. Each week reports are reviewed by our clients and processes are reviewed as required. You can check these platform functionalities on their website or in this Youtube video.
Results
Our client chose to outsource their customer support to Arema Connect in 2014. They chose Arema Connect because of our 24/7 capabilities, experienced workforce and IT infrastructure.
We have built up a strong partnership with our client as we are now their preferred supplier for telephone support, email handling, product recall management & social media monitoring.
Our client’s marketing team chose Arema Connect to monitor their social media on a permanent basis in 2016. We continue to monitor their social media and provide detailed reporting on a weekly basis.
We are delighted to have an extremely strong reference partner in relation to social media monitoring as it is a relatively new area and we have learnt an immense amount over the last year and are confident we can deliver an award winning service to all our future clients. We were delighted to team up with our client at the Sockies Social Media awards in 2017.
In this blog we have talked about:
Retail industry Read more
Social media Read more
Other resources:
Also, you can check our case studies here or click on the tags to read more posts.
For further information about our customer support team or service that we offer please click on the tags below or contact us via email: clientservices@aremaconnect.com.