Webcare is more than customer service

Many organisations view online customer care, or webcare, as a form of service: a standardised way of answering complaints and questions from people who would have called or emailed. Of course, answering questions and addressing complaints is the core of online customer service; however, the team could also serve as a signalling function. The so-called ‘webcare’ is your organisation’s ears and eyes. It is about reacting quickly and effectively to stakeholders through online media, spokesmanship, engagement, marketing, and sales.

Thus, webcare goes beyond simply responding to complaints and questions through Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp. It is about all online channels where consumers can express their opinions. The ‘why’ of webcare is no longer a discussion; it is increasingly an integral part of digital customer contact. It has matured.

However, maturity does not automatically mean wisdom gained over the years. From that, we see that the broad application of webcare across many organisations is still in its infancy. Much too often, online customer service is simply a means of referring customers to traditional customer contact channels. This guide looks at the optimal application of online customer service for organisations. We will discuss the most important channels, objectives, reporting, the organisation and the team, and their corresponding tasks.

Excellent webcare is fast, convenient and offers a little extra

Many organisations focus on the customer and use online and offline media monitoring to gain insight into relevant messages from social networks, news sites and review sites. Therefore, it is unsurprising that many webcare teams respond through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger or review sites such as Trustpilot. Deciding through which channels your service should be provided depends highly on the customer’s desires, your chosen strategy, and the (technological) developments within the customer service landscape.

Webcare begins with listening. Do you signal questions and complaints through social media? Do your customers leave reviews about your brand or products? Are you mentioned on blogs and forums or in responses to news coverage? Join the conversation and respond to those messages!

‘Being active everywhere’ is not always the right choice. This requires alignment with customer service, marketing, communications, and PR. Service ought to be embedded in the most important communication and marketing channels. Do ask yourself whether or not the channel of choice fits your organisation.

Critical success factors are fulfilling promises, excellent personal service, and a reasonable price. Moreover, they distinguish themselves by delivering speed and ease through their digital services and by going the extra mile to offer a bit more. This also strongly determines your customers’ satisfaction. Choosing the proper channels depends not only on the customer but also on whether you can fulfil the customer’s desires and demands regarding the speed, convenience, and quality of the delivered solution.

Signalling of questions, complaints, buying intent and much more

Webcare has a signalling role. Social media monitoring enables signalling questions and complaints until an answer is provided. However, it does not stop here. How about monitoring print media, like newspapers and magazines, or radio and TV broadcasts? It is wise to map when and where conversations about your brand, market, and competitors occur, whether in writing or in speech.

Listening to understand what the (potential) customer means to learn from what went wrong is the basis of monitoring and webcare. Unfortunately, direct action is often missing, and the service process is designed only for reactive customer service. Meanwhile, customers increasingly want better, faster help and service through their preferred channels.

Everything begins with listening. Do you signal questions and complaints through social media? Do your customers leave reviews about your brand or products? Are you mentioned on blogs and forums or in responses to news coverage? Join the conversation and respond to those messages!

Shift of public communication to private channels

Questions to webcare teams are increasingly asked through private channels. This happens, for example, via live chat on the website, a dedicated WhatsApp number for customer service, or Facebook Messenger. This trend leads to an increase in messages and raises additional questions, mainly due to the growing pressure that may negatively influence the speed and convenience of webcare.

Overall, webcare goes well beyond simply responding to complaints and questions on your Twitter and Facebook channels. It is about all online channels where consumers share their opinions. Determine which channels you should watch and choose which type of posts you will or will not respond to.

Again this year, Newcom Research’s research shows the latest developments in social media channels. While Facebook use continues to decrease in the Netherlands, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram use is growing.

Objectives of webcare

What would you like to achieve with webcare? Did the team start with the idea of reducing the workload on your call centre and focusing on cost reduction, or would you like to respond more effectively and quickly to relevant messages? The power of webcare lies in helping out customers and delivering excellent service.

When carried out adequately in a way that consumers value, you can tremendously limit the impact of a single complaint. By that, you prevent escalation and negative ‘word-of-mouth’. Secondly, you can boost positive stories and experiences surrounding your organisation. Social media is social. If you do your best, consumers will share this with friends and followers.

Reputation management

The added value of webcare goes far beyond cost reduction. It influences your reputation! Consumers ask their questions more often through social media and messaging, but increasingly know where to file complaints for maximum exposure. It involves stakeholders who talk about you: on your social channels, online forums and external platforms. With the right webcare input, you are always on top of what is happening online.

Proactive service delivery

Responding solely to messages directed to you creates many missed opportunities. The added value of responding proactively is that it offers information or a helping hand without asking customers to contact you. Using this, organisations can quickly address the problem before it escalates. It can also turn a negative sentiment into a positive experience. A positive experience with webcare is easily shared and can reach a large potential customer base through the viral nature of social media.

Of all the conversations which take place on social media channels from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, more than a quarter are proactive. In the Customer Contact Centre, a cooperation between the Schiphol Group and Arvato Bertelsmann, a team of Social Media Specialists monitors coverage around Schiphol Airport. Aside from solving customer questions, they strive to welcome passengers by proactively engaging in personally relevant conversations.

Detecting points of improvement and leads

Reporting and analysis are essential when implementing reactive or proactive webcare, as they help determine whether the agreed-upon KPIs have been met. Furthermore, you would like to measure the effect of communication and capture the latest product improvement tips or even buying intent!

Webcare offers excellent opportunities to collect input for product improvement. Use your tool to collect and group user feedback to improve your product or service productively. In addition, you can use such communities to actively request input.

Detect potential customers’ buying intent by searching for interesting messages in your sector using keywords. Which questions do they ask? Or is there a conversation presenting a need for your product so you can participate? By identifying the terms used in potential customers’ messages, you can actively monitor them and proactively contact them.

How to organise webcare

First and foremost, the basis needs to be clear and undisputed. Where do you place the webcare team? Which function profiles are required, and what should the team’s goal be? Next up are the details. What is the best set-up? How do you decide on the response time and service level? Finally, you determine how to measure customer satisfaction, and lastly, all of those agreements form your social media policy.

Where do you place webcare?

Smaller organisations often integrate care into other departments, such as customer service. Larger organisations usually have a dedicated webcare team or integrate their activities into communication departments. In this case, spokespersonship and corporate communication are closely related.

Doesn’t webcare primarily belong to customer service? Webcare activity primarily involves answering customer questions and resolving issues. It becomes clear when stakeholders express criticism of business management. These expressions must be monitored to identify potential risks and, if needed, reported promptly to the communication department. Consequently, the response of webcare ought to be in line with the message you want to communicate as a business.

The profile of a webcare employee

Webcare is an extension of spokesmanship and PR. It is important to have employees who know the tricks of the trade. People who understand that a response on Facebook is also a corporate statement. Such a profile is often not the same as the preferred profile of customer service employees. Webcare is, in most cases, an application of one-to-many communication. Consider it as such and acknowledge that this requires a different approach than traditional customer service. The webcare team needs sufficient knowledge and skills to help stakeholders.

A good webcare employee takes sufficient time to create a flexible and correct response. The quality of the answers improves when employees take the time to broaden their knowledge to fully grasp the person, as well as the case and the situation. Has this customer contacted you before about the same problem? If possible, go the extra mile for this person. Perhaps you could help him differently? Such customer insights need to be documented in your webcare or CRM system to adequately inform your colleagues about this situation.

Determine the desired response time and measure the service level

A few years ago, people would get excited by the number of fans and followers on their accounts, but those days are over. The number is not that interesting. Interaction is the basis for online service, and a quick response is the norm for many organisations. Rarely does anyone like to wait (too long) for an answer. Measuring the quality of the online service you deliver to your customers is much more interesting, because good service is the new marketing!

Where needed, use real-time insights to direct the webcare team. Use a sample-based rating to ensure the quality per employee. Evaluate given answers on knowledge of product/service, formulation of the answer, and empathy towards the customer. Webcare agents who don’t use a “conversational human voice” in their answers negatively influence sentiment.

Collect customer feedback through social media

Social media has developed into a full-fledged customer contact channel. Because of their growing importance, it is necessary to understand how customers experience contact through social media. Using online monitoring, larger organisations receive a lot of unfiltered feedback through social media. These messages contain both positive and negative sentiments. Organisations cannot influence the subject, type, or frequency of feedback because they don’t actively request it.

By combining these different types of customer feedback, you gain insight into (structural) points of improvement for your organisation. It’s also important to compare customer contact channels (telephone, email, social media, chat) to create a 360-degree overview of your customers.

By using a good social media monitoring tool, the collection of that feedback and the automatic, scalable measurement of customer happiness via social media become a reality. Social analytics reports are therefore extendable with metrics such as NPS (Net Promoter Score). Next to insight into volume, sentiment, webcare activity and response time, it also determines the overall quality of webcare.

Form a social media or webcare policy

A clear webcare strategy is needed to optimise reputation management, service delivery, and lead generation. Part of the webcare strategy is a communication policy for clear communication, or a social media policy.

A social media policy adds value once agreements on communication through webcare have been established. Different answers to the same question create confusion, especially concerning a public conversation. A good policy determines when, where and whether a response is needed. It describes the preferred manner and tone of voice when responding. This leads to fewer surprises for both the webcare agent and the client. Think of how you want to communicate in case of:

• crises;
• regular questions;
• complaints;
• factual inaccuracies;
• compliments.