The Real Bruce

Last night I experienced the power of social media first hand, and it came from a very unlikely source, General Motors. Yes, that’s right. The company that just months ago was working through a bankruptcy is now using social media to improve their customer service.

Here is what happened. Yesterday my service stabilitrak light came on in my Trailblazer. Since I am not a car expert, I had no idea what this meant. I called my local Chevy dealership and made an appointment to get it looked at, but from that point, a huge knot began to grow in my stomach.

What kind of cost would I be looking at? Would this be under warranty? Is this a big deal?

With all these questions in mind, I headed to the fountain of information, Twitter. I posted a simple message asking my followers if they had ever had this problem and would it be expensive. I used the # tag when mentioning Chevy, hoping to get multiple opinions.

Within 5 minutes of my tweet, I received a Direct message from @GMCustomerSvc asking me to direct message him with more info, so he could help me. I was amazed, not only with the speed of this reply, but also that he offered to help me.

Over the next few minutes we exchanged tweets, but we soon found it cumbersome to limit our messages to Twitter’s 140 character limit. That is when my new GM buddy asked me to switch our conversation toFacebook. He sent me a friend request, and within seconds, we were chatting away about my situation.

At the end of the evening, Jared the GM Twitter Specialist had confirmed my appointment, assigned me a follow up case number and verified that the Stabilitrak was not under warranty. As much as that news disappointed me, I was happy at the service I had received.

This whole episode really illustrates the power of Twitter and the way social media can be used to improve your customer service. Instead of me going to my appointment today already worried and dreading the wait, I was armed with information, comforted that someone cared and confident that I would get good service.

How can you use social media to improve your business? Can you interact with customers through social media?

Most of us love to talk. We want to be stars or the center of attention. That is why we love Social Media. We love to tell people what we are doing and what is important to us. We also all believe that people actually care.

With that in mind as businesses, it gives us a fantastic opportunity, TO LISTEN. With all of these followers, friends and fans, we have access to a huge database of information, thoughts and ideas. Best of all, these thoughts come from people who are interested enough to have made the initial connection.

We now have, at our fingertips, information that has never been available before. Instant updates as to when someone might be hungry or when someone is out shopping. We can know if someone is looking for a new car, or just ate at the restaurant we own. If we just take the time to listen, we can learn a lot.

After listening, we need to act, of course. Thank the customers for their business, send them a link to a car you sell, or invite them to your next function to get to know them better.

There are many tools out there that make the listening easier and can help you interact better, but the main point is to listen. Social media is a very powerful tool, but sometimes we use it incorrectly. Try changing your approach–Talk less and listen more. It will pay you dividends.

I have one simple thought for today. If you are going to venture into the world of social media, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or your flavor of choice, make sure you have a plan.

These days, almost everyone expects you to have a presence on these networks, but if you don’t have a plan, it is worse than not being there at all.

I recently had dinner at a local restaurant. When the service didn’t go as well as I would have liked, I decided to fill out the new “comment card” and post something on the restaurant’s Facebook page. I was going to use Twitter, but unfortunately, they didn’t have a Twitter account.

I made a simple post about my dissatisfaction and waited to get a response. I did eventually get one three days later. I am very happy with the end result, and the Manager did a wonderful job in making things up to me. He won a fan back by his phone call and email.

In talking with him, he did reveal to me that he was struggling with social media and wasn’t sure of the etiquette or how to respond to comments. This is my point. If you are not sure what to do or how to do it, hold off on getting started. Get some advice, make a plan, and then make the leap.

If I would not have been able to find this company on Facebook, I would have asked to speak with the Manager right then. He would have been able to solve the problem, and that would have been the end of it.

By opening his restaurant up to the social world, he is taking on the responsibility of managing that part of his business as well. He must react in a timely fashion and make sure he doesn’t miss anything that is posted about his business.

Last week, Gigaom.com posted an article titled, “Facebook Driving More Traffic Than Google,” that I found very interesting. While there are many stipulations to their research, the fact remains more and more traffic is being generated by the “social web,” and business need to adapt to this thought process.

Think about it. How many times each day do you log into Facebook or Twitter and see one of your friends or followers commenting on a story or sending out a link to something interesting? What do you do? You click on it because you want to check it out, too. After all, your friend thought it was important enough to share. This is all part of the social web.

As I look at analytics each day for my clients, I see the same reflection. Search traffic isn’t necessarily down, but referral traffic is way up for almost every client. Where are these referrals coming from? In almost every case….social networks.

This is why it is so important to make your site social. Can visitors subscribe to a feed of your news? Do you have buttons that allow them to share your content on their social sites? Can they email interesting articles to friends or coworkers? These are just a few of the ways you can make your web site more social.

Now I am sure you found this blog post extremely interesting, so go ahead and click the “ShareThis” button below this post and share it with your friends.

This is one of my favorite videos. It really shows the way social media is exploding. Check it out.