FreshNetworks Blog

A few months ago I read a great tip from Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, in which he described the importance of ‘guerrilla customer service’ as a way to grow small businesses. Crowley described how he would actively search for negative sentiment about Foursquare on Twitter in order to help customers solve their problems. I wholeheartedly agreed with his approach, and believe it’s a crucial consideration for online community managers too.

Very often community managers are too wrapped up in the drive to grow their audiences, due to client expectations and the idea that larger audiences yield greater ROI. We also get wrapped up in engaging only with the branded online community that we manage, forgetting that the majority of our customer base may not be aware that the community exists. So what often gets overlooked is the importance of seeking out and retaining existing customers, especially the unhappy ones.

I once came across a client’s customer who had tweeted a photo of a broken shoe (not the fault of the brand), frustrated that it was old season and she wouldn’t be able to replace it. I helped her to source a replacement shoe in her size. Needless to say, she bought the replacement and thanked us publicly on Twitter for helping her. There you have a great example of quantitative and qualitative ROI, and what was nice for her was the unexpected surprise at being assisted without asking for help. Think of all those unhappy customers whose complaints get lost in the noise of the social web.

For me three points are key if you want to execute slick and successful guerrilla customer service:

1. Use social media monitoring tools to keep on top of all the sentiments flying around your brand everyday in an efficient way. Set up RSS feeds and real time alerts so that you never miss an angry tweet or blog post about your brand.
2. Deal with the unhappy customer in the public space online. Yes, you’re making your brand vulnerable to criticism, but at the end of the day the customer will publicly praise you if you’ve helped them solve their problem – driving positive word of mouth for your customer service.
3. Be prompt to respond. Aim for a best practice turnaround time by working closely with customer service and product teams. Use social media to communicate with the customer as close to real time as possible; the icing on the cake is in being able to prove that it is a more effective customer service channel than telephone or email.