Engage Your Workforce

Last week @rexster was a guest speaker at a Michael Page event on social media and spoke about how to use social networks to engage employees, to provide better customer service and to leverage networks.

At the beginning of the talk Pete mentioned the example of Best Buy in America that uses the twitter account @Twelpforce to manage enquiries and complaints. Through empowering employees and trusting them to manage customer enquiries and complaints Best Buy has created one of the most powerful and successful customer service networks in the world.

Twelpforce is made up of a couple of thousand Best Buy employees who reply to customers within minutes of them asking a question or making a complaint. Current and potential customers are able to ask questions or seek resolutions without having to enter a store and the expertise of employees is utilised in a new way.

People are no longer satisfied to wait in a phone queue or waste time going into a store to find out that a product is out of stock. I now use twitter to manage issues with my phone account, to find out where to get the best coffee or even to organise a location to watch the Tour De France (that's the @HoneyBar by the way). Through utilising the tangible and tacit knowledge that employees hold companies are able to create better engagement (with customers & employees), reduce complaints and to build positive sentiment around their brand.

We saw last week how instantaneously the twelpforce respond to enquiries when within minutes of posting a tweet about the work they did we received a reply:

Social media and social networks are simply capitalising on what you've already got available within your own organisation: talented, passionate people who want to provide your consumers with the best experience possible.

So don't restict your people - empower them to do their job and you might just be suprised by what they are capable of.