Social media is enabling an unprecedented level of transparency in communication between organizations and customers opening sources of collaboration that were difficult or sought to be impossible in the past. Yet, organizations are tentative about the positive impacts social media holds in improving customer service and experience. Regardless of the proven benefits, social media is still perceived as a promotional tool, rather than a customer service tool.
Logistics and Supply chain are not new to this digital transformation. There is an increasing trend of logistics companies logging on to social media to interact with customers and shippers. Either to expose prospective customers to the company and capabilities, or to engage with existing customers, shippers, and supply chain partners. More than 90% of logistics companies that responded to Fronetics Strategic Advisors survey call social media an “important” or a “very important” tool for engaging, and 100% of respondents see social media to be helping with customer retention.
There is a significant uptick in the number of customers using social media platforms, and they expect companies to offer services via these platforms. If logistics companies are to engage with customers and provide them the 21st-century customer experience, they need to make efforts to leverage this rapidly-emerging channel.
We have identified a list of opportunities on how social media can be leveraged to improve overall customer experience and customer service in logistics and supply chain companies.
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Customer Awareness– Due to the larger reach of social media compared to traditional channels, logistics companies can promote campaigns and service capabilities while reducing overall marketing costs. Any benefit of creating awareness through social media is measurability. Potential reach, mentions, inbound links, share of voice and conversations compared to the competition, etc., can be measured to review performance.
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Customer Insights– Social media is a wealth of customer information. Logistics companies can leverage customer data on social media to derive customer insights.
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Process Development– With an increasing trend of customers logging on to social media, companies can capitalize this to garner customer feedback about services.
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Customer Service– Since social media is a real-time platform, logistics companies can proactively respond to customer complaints or concerns without aggravating the customer.
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Reputation Management– Because social media is an inherently open a dynamic platform in nature, negative comments on the platform can risk the company’s reputation. By proactively leveraging social media, and hiring and training social media savvy staff, logistics companies can positively respond to a larger audience.
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Customer Advocacy– In this digital age there is no better conduit than social media for customer advocacy. Positive messaging, and being responsive to customer pain-points offers opportunities to leverage social media as a platform for customer advocacy and loyalty.
With the increasing usage of social media in emerging markets, logistics companies and are making efforts to leverage this medium to reinforce customer engagement. However, the current logistics social media focus has been restricted to merely making a presence in the platform. But with the strong affinity of customers towards social media and increasing customer expectations, companies need to focus their efforts to leverage and capitalize the opportunities social media has to offer to improve customer service in logistics.