Transparency Is King

I was doing my normal reading the other day of blog posts and my twitter feed when I saw a blog post that stuck out and made me think about a major issue that customer service organizations are facing and will likely continue to struggle with for some time, Transparency in customer service.

You see, the post I was reading was a post about Charter Communications and their customer service transformation process. They have pushed out some marketing messaging promising a much better customer experience as they see the competition heating up, they see service as a differentiator. Smart move on their part in my mind, but the blog post went on to show some interesting messages from social media about the company and their challenge with transparency was front and center.

Message after message talked about how much easier and faster it was to get something taken care of if the person used Twitter as their primary source or channel of entry to deal with Charter. The customers talked and even glowed about the fact that they just had to say a few negative things and immediately someone was responding to them and getting them set up with what they needed to get their issue resolved. Now, this is not a phenomenon that is isolated to Twitter only and to Charter only. This is something that all companies are struggling with and will continue to struggle with until they align their customer service practices with Twitter in one major way, Transparency.

That is what Twitter and Facebook drive in so many ways. Not just with Customer Service issues, but with pricing, marketing, product and on and on. Some will call this collaboration, some will call it co creation with consumers, but I just like to boil it down to one key thing, Transparency.

No rocket science here, but as we all know, social media outlets give consumers the voice to punish brands or companies when they are not being transparent. Everyone can see for themselves when someone has an issue and what the brand is doing about that issue. The big challenge for companies and especially service executives is getting their teams aligned internally to make sure that the same kind of transparency exists in every other channel. If you don't make this a priority, it is my opinion that customers will only then do one of two things:

1. They will continue to use Twitter or Facebook to continually punish you for not making your other channels more transparent

or

2. They will just continue to jump from one new channel to the next knowing that the newer channels of support will represent the fastest and easiest way to resolve an issue.

So the question today for you is, Have you aligned your channels for support so that your customers don't feel like they need to find the "shiny new channel" to get the service the desire?