Brands need to improve customer interaction on social media, says Threepipe’s Jim Hawker

I have moved home recently, which means my life has become beholden to a number of companies. So far British Gas, British Telecom and Camden Council have all let me down, but then you would kind of expect that wouldn’t you?

Where I have been surprised are the companies that are “socially switched on” yet are clearly not using their social media channels for anything but promotion of their goods and services.

Perhaps it is because we have a number of clients for which we manage social channels and hence customer service, that I have become finely attuned to the demands of the general public and therefore a lot more demanding when it comes to my own experience.

Made.com for instance, backed by one of the founders of Lastminute.com. Now you would expect it to know what to do? Not a Scooby Doo. Thesleeproom.com, trying to behave like the innocent brand in the world of bedding – it doesn’t have a clue either. Both companies plus a holiday website called Myboutiquehotel.com, have seriously let me down in the last month.

Why put all the effort into creating a lovely brand, talking yourself up, only to fail on customer service – both in the real world and in the social media world? Go on Made.com and you will see a stream of complaints about poor delivery, yet the company does all the wrong things when dealing with these complaints. It doesn’t resolve the issues in the right way, which leads to even greater anger and even more social media problems for itself.

These, and other companies, need some help when trying to understand how to manage and resolve customer problems, instead of just using the social media platforms to promote themselves.

Many brands are beginning to take management of social media communities in-house and in most cases I think that is a good thing. No agency person will have the product knowledge of someone working full-time in the business and this is vital to the speed of customer service. Also, the maths don’t add up when it comes to community management – why pay an agency to do this when you can more cost effectively train and have permanent cover in-house?

I think agencies are great at providing growth strategies for communities and for helping to build architecture to enable that growth, but eventually brands will realise that the management should be done at home. However, for that to happen effectively, they need to understand what social media channels are for – it’s a two-way experience and not an advertising channel. Something I thought Lastminute.com’s Brent Hoberman and others would have known by now.