Social media CRM is only as good as the service it is supporting

Following on Kewal's post regarding the lack of joined up customer service he received from Sky recently, I thought I should share the more positive customer service experience I received from  Royal Mail.

Understandably, I was less than impressed when I had a missed delivery one Saturday despite being in all day and paying extra for a next-day service.  Whereas before I may have just left it, through not wanting to waste my time calling customer service, this time I decided to take my complaint online.  I soon found the Royal Mail's Twitter account (@RoyalMail) and soon made my displeasure known – well as much as you can in 140 characters!

Soon enough, I got a reply from @RoyalMail asking me to follow them so we could continue our conversation via DM/email.  This led me to be directly being in contact with a named customer service representative who looked into my complaint and followed it up and logged a complaint with my local delivery office.  In the end, I still had to go and collect my package the following weekend, however due to the responsive and helpful nature of the company's Twitter service I at least felt again like a valued customer – which is half the battle when it comes to customer service.

I definitely think the likes of Twitter and Facebook do have their place when it comes to customer service.  However, they can't ultimately cover the service failings of the offline world.