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Should marketers or customer service reps be in charge of social media complaints?
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5 Answers
The simple answer, in my mind, is that marketers should not be in charge of social media. Community managers should. If you're just using social media as another way to blast out marketing content, you're doing it wrong. You don't go to a party and shout about your product, you have conversations.
A good community manager can balance marketing content with actual interactions, and have enough knowledge of the product to provide support or route them correctly.
Oh I love this question!
I deal with this question a lot. The answer I believe is very challenging. I have seen marketing overlook a cry for help causing a PR nightmare and a sales oppertunity fall short as it landed in the hands of service rep who does not have the right training to generate a sales lead. There is no perfect answer here; however it is be posible using the right toolset to identify key words for example that both parties can handle. Words are very powerful and we can understand a user's intention usually within a "handfull". Then we can flag that piece of media and route it to the approperiate department.
The silos this question implies are real and problematic. Connecting these business functions is essential. Here's the important part: Much as marketing should serve sales, it should serve customer service. Marketing's role is in framing the language, helping with testing and metics, and aligning goals. I see the onus very much on marketing to go the extra mile and enable Customer Service to use social media tools more effectively. Much like the sales relationship, building internal credibility is essential for marketing to get the appropriate seat at the table and provide the appropriate learnings. This is a tussle that will continue to heat up in 2012. If marketing is seen as arrogant or insensitive to the challenges presented to customer service by sCRM then it's role will be further marginalized inside the enterprise.
While perfectly reasonable in SMB's, I'm not sure building a new social silo by separating the community management role from marketing and customer service is practical as the potential to increase internal communication complexity is very high.
For a growing international company, a dynamic internal ecosystem is important. All of us at PlanMill have access to our UserVoice admin, which enables all of us to answer any customer feedback anytime. The main responsibility however lies with our Customer Support and Marketing, which ensures all questions are answered and closed. Openness is really important and we practice what we preach.
There is no standard answer here, however since Social Media tools are largely & directly used to ire mostly the bad things about the organization, it may not necessarily fit into any specific division/group within the organization.
It would be ideal to have a seasoned person within the organization, with good acumen towards relationship management, to be responsible for this activity. He should be responsible to voice the views of the customer internally & also provide the needful answers/resolutions to the target audience in the corporate interest.
A tough balancing act, requires a seasoned team to manage this process.
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